Wednesday Briefing

Fallout from the Trump administration’s Signal chat leak.

U.S. intelligence agency chiefs testified before a Senate committee yesterday about senior officials’ discussion of war plans on a messaging app.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Trump and his aides downplay Signal chat leak

President Trump insisted yesterday that top officials in his administration had not shared classified information about an imminent attack on Yemen in a group chat on the Signal messaging app, to which the national security adviser had mistakenly added a journalist.

Tulsi Gabbard, the intelligence director, and John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, testifying before the Senate about the leak, acknowledged that details about strike targets had been discussed, but they said none of it was sensitive information from their departments. That left Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared the plans for the March 15 attack in the chat, under a microscope.

Democrats have called for Hegseth’s resignation, as well as that of Michael Waltz, the national security adviser. (Read more about Hegseth’s rocky first months in his role.)

Trump downplayed the significance of the leak and defended Waltz, calling him “a very good man.” He called Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, who was added to the chat before the attack began and revealed the leak this week, a “sleaze bag.”

Here’s what to know about the leak. For more, read an annotated transcript.

A deepening rift: Europeans reacted with exasperation and anger to comments by chat participants, including the vice president, that painted them as geopolitical parasites.