Trump administration discusses national security in 20 group chats on Signal - Politico

According to sources cited by the edition, Waltz's team regularly created Signal chats for internal discussions on security matters.

Two of the four people added to these chats stated that they participated in or were aware of the existence of at least 20 such groups. All four confirmed that the discussions involved confidential information related to Ukraine, China, the Middle East, and the situation in the Gaza Strip.

The scale of Signal use in the Trump administration turned out to be larger than previously reported. This suggests that the app was actively used for internal government communications.

"It was commonplace to stand up chats on any given national security topic," one source said. According to this source, these discussions involved US government representatives and high-ranking officials.

One of the interlocutors also noted that Waltz effectively built the National Security Council's communication system around Signal.

The press secretary of the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, stated that the use of Signal is permitted on government devices, and some agencies automatically install it on official phones. According to him, this app was used both during the Biden administration and under Trump's presidency.

Hughes added that it is one of the approved methods of communication but not the primary or even secondary one.

"It is one of the approved methods of communicating but is not the primary or even secondary, it is one of a host of approved methods for unclassified material with the understanding that a user must preserve the record. Any claim of use for classified information is 100 percent untrue," said the spokesperson for the National Security Council.

Sources for Politico did not confirm whether classified information was transmitted via this messenger. However, they noted that the discussions involved important aspects of the national security system's operations.

Scandal surrounding the use of Signal

At the end of March, a major scandal broke out in the US. President's National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat where plans for airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen were being discussed.

In light of the controversy, US Vice President JD Vance suggested to President Donald Trump that Waltz be dismissed. However, the president refused, not wanting to give liberal media and Democrats a reason to claim they were right.

Moreover, on April 2, The Washington Post published information suggesting that Waltz and his team had allegedly used unsecured Google email for government matters.

However, Trump’s administration stated that Waltz did not send classified information through Gmail.