The Senate Armed Services Committee will ask the White House for an expedited inspector general investigation into the apparent leak of classified information by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Sen. Roger Wicker, the committee’s chair, said on Wednesday.
“The information, as published recently, appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature — based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” Wicker told reporters. “I think it’s incumbent on us to verify that those were actually the words and the sentences.”
The ranking member of the committee, Sen. Jack Reed, is pushing for an investigation, as well as a classified briefing on the issue from a senior official at the White House.
Wicker said he and Reed were “working together on a bipartisan basis as we’ve always tried to do.”
The inspector general for the Department of Defense was fired last month. But Wicker and Reed said they still expect a report quickly from Steven Stebbins, the acting inspector general.
It’s still not clear how much the Republican-led Congress will involve itself in probing the incident, however. The call for some kind of government investigation comes as the White House continues to downplay the severity of a possible security breach.
“The Atlantic,” whose editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally added to a Signal group chat of high-ranking administration officials discussing plans to bomb Yemen, published on Wednesday the entirety of the text thread Goldberg was privy to. Those messages, sent between Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, among others, included specific information about weapons and the timing of the U.S strikes. After the strikes took place, the officials also discussed targets. This information would typically only be conveyed in a secure environment — not over the commercially available messaging app Signal.
Democratic leaders have called for Hegseth’s resignation over the messages, and inquired about the security measures that were in place for those in the group chat who were abroad when they received the messages.
Many Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, have either shied away from the controversy or brushed it off entirely.
Sen. Joni Ernst said she would wait for the administration’s investigation into the matter.
“The NSC is doing a probe into it, and I’m sure they will get the results back to us,” Ernst said of the National Security Council’s review.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin called the issue a “nothing-burger” and said that “there was nothing classified” in the Signal messages published by “The Atlantic” on Wednesday morning. “The whole Goldberg war plans was a funk,” he said.
When asked about Wicker’s plans for the Armed Services Committee to investigate the matter, Mullin said, “Well, he’s the chairman. He can do that.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville didn’t see the need for an investigation, either, calling the incident a one-off.
“No, it’s a one-time deal. It ain’t gonna happen again,” Tuberville said of mistakenly including a reporter in the group chat. “You get a chance. After that, you don’t get any more chances.”
And Sen. Josh Hawley questioned what people were concerned about.“Well, I mean, what’s the concern? I mean the strikes went off successfully, the bad guys got killed. President’s policies are working.”
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday reiterated the White House’s position that none of the information in the messages amounted to classified material.“I would characterize this as a policy discussion, a sensitive policy discussion,” she told reporters.
Hegseth and Waltz — who seemingly added Goldberg to the chat by accident — have continued to deny that any classified material was in the communications, even after details were made public.
“No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent,” Waltz posted on X. In an interview with Fox New, Waltz said he was the individual who built the group chat, that he made a mistake he’s “taking responsibility” for and “technical experts” — including Elon Musk — were going to review how Goldberg was added.
Despite the administration’s characterization of the messages, several Republicans made it clear they did not think the information that was communicated over Signal should have been discussed on the app.
“I’m just simply saying that information should not have been shared on that platform. It’s just the way it is,” Sen. Mike Rounds said of the messages.
“I don’t think there are a lot of facts in dispute here, that’s what I think,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said. “To me, the bottom line is: Is Signal secure enough to discuss the type of detailed information that we all know was discussed? And I think the answer to that for me is, no.”
Sen. Thom Tillis — who made clear he doesn’t see Signal itself as the issue, as he’s a huge fan and user of the app — also said it was not the appropriate platform for this information.
“The question is, if it was classified information, why were you not using a classified conduit to send it?” Tillis said.
Tillis then went further than his colleagues to imply there are more serious implications for sharing classified information.
“Obviously, the timing and targets would generally be sensitive. I would assume that it is,” Tillis said, noting that he hadn’t read the full chat transcript yet. “If that’s the case, then it’s a breach of sharing classified communications. Then you’re subject to the same thing I would be if I tweeted something just after I left the SCIF.”
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Helen Huiskes, a NOTUS reporter and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed to this report.