Mike Waltz’s team set up at least 20 Signal chats for national security work – report

Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and his team have created at least 20 different group chats on the encrypted messaging app Signal to coordinate sensitive national security work, sources tell Politico.

The revelation, which cites four people with direct knowledge of the practice, follows heightened scrutiny of the administration’s handling of sensitive information after the Atlantic recently published messages from a chat that included the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, sharing operational details of deadly strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Those anonymous sources told Politico the Signal chats covered a wide range of policy areas, including Ukraine, China, Gaza, broader Middle East policy, Africa and Europe. All four individuals reported seeing “sensitive information” discussed in these forums, though none said they were aware of classified material being shared.

Over the last few days, Waltz’s flippant nature over the protection of national security secrets has been exposed. The Washington Post reported on documents revealing that Waltz’s team had been conducting government business through personal Gmail accounts.

The White House has again defended the practice, with a national security council spokesperson, Brian Hughes, telling Politico that Signal was “not banned from government devices” and was automatically installed on some agencies’ phones.

“It is one of the approved methods of communicating but is not the primary or even secondary,” Hughes said, adding that any claim of classified information being shared was “100% untrue.”

The insistence by administration officials that none of the messages were classified, including past remarks by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and Hegseth, fly in the face of the defense department’s own rulebook on what would count as classified.

In the earlier chat, Hegseth shared specific operational details about military strikes in Yemen, including launch times for F-18 fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles. These details, according to the former state department attorney Brian Finucane, who advised on past strikes on Yemen, would typically be classified based on his experience.

Others in the national security establishment have similarly warned that using a messaging app like Signal could potentially violate federal record-keeping laws if chats are automatically deleted, and could compromise operational security if a phone is seized.

Despite the earlier controversies, Leavitt indicated on Monday that Trump stood firmly behind his national security adviser, and that an investigation into how Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a sensitive chat had been closed.