Exclusive: how the Atlanticâs Jeffrey Goldberg got added to the White House Signal group chat
Internal investigation cleared the national security adviser Mike Waltz, but the mistake was months in the making
Internal investigation cleared the national security adviser Mike Waltz, but the mistake was months in the making
www.theguardian.com
â⌠The disclosures nonetheless triggered a âforensic reviewâ by the White House information technology office, which found that Waltzâs phone had saved Goldbergâs number as part of an unlikely series of events that started when Goldberg emailed the Trump campaign last October.
According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate.
Goldbergâs email was forwarded to then-Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email â including the signature block with Goldbergâs phone number â into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.
Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldbergâs number in his iPhone â under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.
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According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a âcontact suggestion updateâ by Waltzâs iPhone, which one person described as the function where an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related.
The mistake went unnoticed until last month when Waltz sought to add Hughes to the Signal group chat â but ended up adding Goldbergâs number to the 13 March message chain named âHouthi PC small groupâ, where several top US officials discussed plans for strikes against the Houthis. âŚâ