Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., left, and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., have asked the Defense Department’s inspector general to assess whether national security officials transferred classified information when they discussed plans for airstrikes in Yemen in the presence of a journalist. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
WASHINGTON — Top senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday asked the Defense Department to investigate the Signal group chat in which Trump national security officials discussed plans for airstrikes in Yemen in the presence of a journalist.
The request is bipartisan, with Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the committee, and Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the panel, asking the department’s inspector general to assess whether anyone in the chat transferred classified information.
The formal request for a probe comes four days after the top editor of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed he was mistakenly included in the conversation. The scandal has caused a furor on Capitol Hill, with Democrats increasingly calling for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s resignation.
Hours before the bombing, Hegseth posted when American fighter pilots would attack Houthi targets in Yemen, sharing information on the types of aircraft that would be used and the approximate times of launches and strikes.
The chat on the commercial messaging app also included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and other top officials. Waltz, a former Green Beret, accidentally invited Goldberg to the discussion.
President Donald Trump’s administration has tried to downplay the security breach and continues to insist no classified information was shared in the Signal chat. Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated Thursday that the Justice Department will not look into the matter.
“It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released,” Bondi said. “What we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission.”
But the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said an inquiry was necessary.
“If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know,” Wicker and Reed wrote in a letter to Steven Stebbins, the acting inspector general at the Pentagon.
The senators said they wanted a full accounting of what was communicated in the chat and whether anyone had transferred classified information, including operational details, from classified systems to unclassified systems and if so, how.
Hegseth has denied he shared war plans, describing his disclosure of weapons and timing as a “team update” to “provide updates in real time, general updates in real time.”
The House Armed Services Committee has not called for an investigation into the incident but Democrats on the committee are pressing Republicans to hold a hearing with Hegseth.
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the panel, on Wednesday demanded Hegseth resign, saying his actions displayed “a level of incompetence that should not be tolerated at the Defense Department.”
“Anybody working at the Defense Department who shared this type of information should be fired and certainly the secretary of defense should be held to that same standard,” he said.
Reed has not called for Hegseth’s resignation but said the Signal chat represented “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
