Mike Waltz isn’t off the hook yet. Far-right political activist Laura Loomer’s recent Oval Office visit led President Donald Trump to fire several national security officials, putting the heat back on the national security adviser’s team — one already beleaguered by the Signal scandal.
Publicly, the White House said it had closed its investigation into the Signal group chat Waltz created with top administration officials to discuss U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. But between reports that the National Security Council has used Signal widely for sensitive conversations and the Thursday firings, first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by NOTUS, outside observers don’t see the office’s problems going away.
“The knives are out,” a national security expert closely familiar with Trump’s National Security Council said. “There’s clearly a political agenda here to change the trajectory of Waltz’s tenure.”
Waltz was spared Thursday, as was his top adviser and Senate veteran Alex Wong, who has been the subject of Loomer’s disdain online. Two sources familiar with Trump’s meeting with Loomer said that the MAGA acolyte brought in a stack of documents, including social media posts and personal records, to convince the president to fire members of the NSC. One source said that up to six officials have already been fired, with more firings possible.
According to The New York Times, Brian Walsh, the senior director for intelligence, Maggie Dougherty, the senior director for international organizations, and Thomas Boodry, the senior director for legislative affairs, were all let go.
Senate Republicans were slow to the news Thursday, with several telling NOTUS they hadn’t heard about the firings. Sen. Mike Rounds, however, who sits on the Senate Intelligence committee, said “that staff is a lot of good people” of the NSC. He said he wasn’t personally familiar with Loomer beyond her online reputation.
Last week Sen. Tom Cotton posted in support of Wong and his wife in light of Loomer’s attacks against him. Cotton called the two “complete and total patriots, 100% MAGA Warriors who always put America First.” Wong worked for Cotton for three years before being hired by the NSC.
There hasn’t been much daylight between Waltz and Trump, with even minor disagreements being kept behind closed doors, and Waltz even changing position from his views in Congress to get in line with the White House.
Politico reported Wednesday that Waltz’s team set up at least 20 chats to coordinate official business on sensitive issues spanning from the conflict in Ukraine to Europe and Africa policy. The administration said no classified information was shared in those chats and that Signal is an approved form of communication in the government.
Now, one week after The Atlantic’s report revealing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared typically classified information over a Signal group chat, current and former defense officials told NOTUS that while Signal is widely used, what’s sent across the platform is now getting heightened scrutiny.
The White House denied any wrongdoing on the part of the top administration officials in the published Signal chat. Multiple outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, reported that Waltz, however, was on shaky ground with Trump after the incident.
Now with the firings, it’s apparent that the administration isn’t silencing the questions.
Even before the Loomer meeting, some Republicans remained focused on the security protocols at the NSC and in the administration, publicly supporting an inspector general investigation of the chat and screenshots published by The Atlantic.
Sen. Thom Tillis told NOTUS Tuesday that he thinks Waltz is “a good person” whom he has “a lot of confidence in,” and that he doesn’t want to be “condemning people that I have respect for, and I voted for confirmations,” but that the administration shouldn’t just “gloss over” the issue.
“This was a mistake,” Tillis said about screenshots he’d read. “It was also a lapse for anyone else in there, who observed, what had to have been considered classified information, to not have said something.”
“I actually told my staff, in my code of conduct, if they’d done something like that, they would have been fired before the sunset,” Tillis said of the now-infamous Signal group chat about military targets in Yemen.
Democrats, meanwhile, are leading the outrage on Capitol Hill, especially those with a military background.
“This scandal, far from going away, is actually reverberating among our allies through the national security apparatus and through our military,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal said.
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS.