SIMMERING TENSIONS threatened to boil over Wednesday as Washington was consumed for a second day by revelations that President Trump's national security team had inadvertently given a journalist access to a chat group discussion about a planned bombing in Yemen.
The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg injected new life into the story by publishing group chat messages he'd previously kept private due to national security concerns.
Goldberg said he released the messages because the Trump administration insisted that there was no classified information in the texts.
"There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared," he wrote.
The new texts revealed details about the timeline of the airstrike in Yemen, as well as the weapons used.
The Trump administration argued that there's a difference between "attack plans" and classified "war plans," while ramping up personal criticism of Goldberg.
• "No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X. "Those are some really sh---- war plans. This only proves one thing: Jeff Goldberg has never seen a war plan or an 'attack plan' (as he now calls it). Not even close."
• Goldberg accused the administration of playing "some sort of weird semantic game."
• White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump still has confidence in his national security team in a briefing that lasted only 16 minutes.
There were fireworks on Capitol Hill, where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe testified to Congress about global threats.
Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez (Calif.) asked if Hegseth "had been drinking," pointing to questions raised during the confirmation process about Hegseth's past alcohol use.
"That's an offensive line of question," Ratcliffe responded., raising his voice amid crosstalk. "The answer is no."
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Wis.) calling Hegseth a "f---ing liar."
Gabbard said Wednesday the encrypted app comes pre-installed on national security devices. Meanwhile, special envoy Steve Witkoff ripped into a Wall Street Journal editorial, saying he was "incredulous" the paper did not check with him on whether he had personal devices during a recent trip to Moscow before publishing an editorial raising concerns about his inclusion in the Signal chat group.
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who Trump has called on to be impeached for temporarily blocking some deportations, has been assigned to oversee the lawsuit alleging the officials violated the Federal Records Act by communicating over Signal.
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