Trump’s NSA Who Leaked War Plans to Reporter in a Group Chat Previously Shredded His Predecessor Over Leaked Intel

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein.

The challenge for politicians in our digital age is that it’s all too easy for digital sleuths to dig up video clips of their past selves and smack them with charges of hypocrisy. Such is the tale of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who accidentally added a reporter on a group chat discussing secret war plans but less than two years ago had loudly attacked his predecessor for sending top secret emails to a private email account.

The political world was stunned Monday by a report from Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, describing how Waltz had accidentally added him in a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal that included the “principals committee,” top level national security agency officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, as they discussed war plans and messaging strategies related to striking Houthi rebels in Yemen earlier this month.

According to Goldberg’s bombshell report, besides Waltz the chat apparently included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, “and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for [Homeland Security advisor and White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller,” and other national security officials, intelligence agents, and so on. Goldberg’s name showed up in the chat as “JG,” he wrote.

Goldberg excoriated Waltz and the other participants in the chat for the “shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation,” like debating operational details for the upcoming strike against the Houthis, discussing other top secret information about U.S. intelligence and military plans and capabilities — besides the problematic lack of caution that led to his number being included in the first place. Goldberg published his report on the whole escapade Monday afternoon and noted several names and information that he deliberately withheld because they could compromise the identities of active intelligence officers and other classified U.S. intelligence and military communications and information.

The news of the Signal chat sent shockwaves through Washington, and it didn’t take long for one of Waltz’s tweets from 2023 to resurface on social media.

In the June 12, 2023 post, retweeted by CNN anchor Jake Tapper among others, Waltz shared a video clip of an appearance he made on Fox Business criticizing Jake Sullivan, who was National Security Advisor at the time for President Joe Biden’s administration.

“Talk about a DOUBLE STANDARD: Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent top secret emails to Hillary Clinton’s private account and the DOJ didn’t do a DAMN THING about it,” Waltz wrote as a caption on the tweet. “No wonder Americans are losing faith in our justice system.”

The video shows Waltz telling Fox’s Stuart Varney that the “hypocrisy is just so through the roof,” apparently responding to criticism of Trump in the wake of his indictment in the classified documents case a few days earlier. Waltz criticized Sullivan for sending “top secret emails to Hillary Clinton when he was her deputy chief of staff at the State Department, and got nothing, not even a slap on the wrist, on an unsecured server that we know our enemies were trying to access…and the consequences were zilch.”