House Foreign Affairs Committee member Rep. Sara Jacobs on Monday blasted the Trump administration’s use of the Signal message app to discuss war plans, saying that action was “directly putting our service members at risk.”
Top officials including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz mistakenly disclosed detailed war plans to a journalist shortly before the U.S. attacked Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis earlier this month.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said in a report on Monday that he was unexpectedly invited to an encrypted chat group called the “Houthi PC small group.” He thought it was a scam, but it turned out to be real — and a breach of security.
Hours before the attacks started, Hegseth posted operational details about the plan in the messaging group, “including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg said.
“They are directly putting our service members at risk,” said Jacobs, a Democrat who represents central San Diego County, in an interview of CNN. “It is the people I represent in San Diego who are putting their lives on the line for our country.”
Jacobs said the Trump team acted with “such callousness” in using the app rather than a secure Pentagon communications network. Signal is an open-source messaging application.
“Why were they having this conversation on Signal to begin with? What other conversations have they been having on commercial applications?” Jacobs asked.
President Trump told reporters at the White House that he was unaware of the incident. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic,” Trump said.
A White House official said later that an investigation was under way and Trump had been briefed on it.
Reuters contributed to this article.
