Trump minimizes the loss, supporting the waltz and the indicator of the journalist

President Trump defined an extraordinary violation of security as a lower transgression on Tuesday, insisting on the fact that the best officials of the administration had not shared any classified information as they discussed secret military plans in a group chat that included the chief publisher of Atlantic magazine.

“So this was not classified,” said Trump during a meeting with the US ambassadors to the White House. “Now if it is classified information, they are probably a little different, but I always say, you have to learn from any experience.”

Trump was also next to his national security councilor, Michael Waltz, who had inadvertently added the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat on the Signal app, which included vice -president JD Vance and others. In the chat, the defense secretary Pete Hegseth shared information on times, objectives and weapons systems to be used in an attack on the Houthi militants in Yemen, according to Mr. Goldberg.

“I think it was very unfair in the way they attacked Michael,” said the president of Waltz.

Former national security officials said they were skeptical about the fact that the information shared by Mr. Hegseth in view of the strike on March 15 have not been classified, given the nature of the life or death of the operation.

The President and the Defense Secretary have the ability to affirm, even retroactively, that the information is declassified. But the officials refused to answer questions about the details of the information or that, exactly, they determined that it was not classified and that it could be shared on Signal, a encrypted commercial app.

Mr. Hegseth denounced Mr. Goldberg at the end of Monday, saying that he had been “prevailed the buffiles several times”. But Tuesday morning, testifying to the Senate, the first two nation’s intelligence officials admitted that the exchanges released by the Atlantic were accurate.

During the encounter to the White House, while the journalists put the president with questions about the loss, Mr. Trump repeatedly turned to Mr. Waltz to answer. Mr. Waltz tried to largely redirect attention, praising the strikes in Yemen and attacking Mr. Goldberg.

“This in particular, I never met, I don’t know, he never communicated,” he said, adding that “we are examining and reviewing how the hell entered this room”.

Mr. Trump called Mr. Goldberg a “Slezebag”.

Later Tuesday, Mr. Waltz told the guest Laura Ingraham on Fox News that “I take full responsibility” for sharing the plans, adding that he had “built the group” and inadvertently added Mr. Goldberg even while he claimed that “I don’t send him a message, he is not on my phone”.

But the overall response of Mr. Trump and his allies – minimizing the episode as he faults an opponent – is a more tempoworn practice that the administration and his chorus of supporters have deployed during the president’s political career while trying to deviate criticisms. Mr. Trump hate to admit errors, and while some democrats have asked for the resignation for Mr. Waltz and Mr. Hegseth, the president seems wary of firing his staff. In this way he could drill his argument that the first months of his second mandate were nothing but success.

“They made a big problem because we had two perfect months,” said Trump.

The story of the Trump administration directly contradicted that given in Goldberg’s explosive relationship in the Atlantic Monday. In his article, Mr. Goldberg Shared some screenshots and quotes From the group chat, but claimed to have chosen not to share the most specific information on the strike plans and the assessments of the battle damage that could be used to damage the American military and intelligence personnel.

Goldberg rejected the statements of the Trump Administration according to which no classified information was shared, simply saying: “They are wrong”.

Former national security officials involved in similar operations in previous administrations have declared that they were prone to agree, even without seeing the messages.

“Any detail or done on an operation, no matter how small, will be classified above all before the operation took place,” said Chris Meagher, who was a high official of the Defense Department during the Biden administration. “With such an operation, it is not possible that the recognition of the existence of this mission has not been classified.”

During a controversial hearing of the Senate’s intelligence committee Tuesday, the Democrats denounced the best espionage garments of the nation, John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA, and Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence.

Both were included in the Signal chat in question, even if Mrs. Gabbard initially did not answer the questions of the senators that she had been involved. When Mr. Ratcliffe confirmed his participation, he followed his example.

“This sloppy, this lack of respect for our intelligence agencies is completely unacceptable,” said Senator Michael Bennet, democratic from Colorado, during the hearing, which had been scheduled for weeks ago for the presentation of the “evaluation of world threats”. “You have to do better.”

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a democrat who is vice -president of the committee, was visibly angry when he declared that the intelligence officials and others in the group chat had shown “sloppy, negligent and incompetent behaviors”. Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon’s Democrat, suggested that Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Waltz should resign. Many Democrats re -emerged the clips of Mr. Waltz and other Trump allies of nine years ago, criticizing the use by Hillary Clinton of a private email server when he was a secretary of state.

Trump has made his management of those messages from the internal state department a big problem in his 2016 campaign, asking for criminal investigations.

During the hearing, Mr. Ratcliffe and Mrs. Gabbard recognized the sensitivity of information on strike objectives, but did not insist on the fact that sensitive information had not been shared by their areas of responsibility.

Ratcliffe said that it depends on Mr. Hegseth, the defense secretary, determine what information could be shared in an un classified chat.

Even if the information was not classified, revealing it in an environment that is not scarce could still violate the 1917 Spionic Act. On the basis of this law, what is known as National Defense Information must not be classified so that its exposure is harmful to the safety of the country. The Department of Justice rarely pursues violations that do not involve classified material and Trump has supplied his administration with loyalists who have shown little interest in challenging him or his officials.

“The history of the Atlantic is nothing more than a section of the Natesc Extablishment community that manages the same tired gameplay of past years,” Steven Cheung, the communications director of the White House, published on social media.

He added that “at each turn the anti-trump forces have tried to arm innocue actions and transform them into a false insult that the false news can use to avenge the disinformation.

Other officials and allies of Trump also launched against Mr. Goldberg.

But several republicans expressed concern about the inclusion of Mr. Goldberg in the chat and recognized that it had been a mistake. Most, however, said they wanted a complete briefing before drawing conclusions. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the president of the armed services committee, said that his panel would examine what had happened, but did not provide details.

“We are definitely worried,” said Wicker to journalists, adding that he and his colleagues from the Committee were “considering our options”.

Goldberg’s report also raised concerns about administration officials using Signal, a non -security messaging platform and the setting of messages to automatically delete. THE Act on the presidential registersissued in 1978, he states that the government “reserves and maintains complete property, possession and control of the presidential registers”, which includes materials that the president of the president creates or receives during their official functions.

Ratcliffe said that the White House and the IT and infrastructure security agency approved the use of the signal for high officials, suggesting that, since it is encrypted, it was safer than normal telephone lines. One of the main Chinese intelligence services has pierced the non -encrypted networks of the main American telecommunications companies last year, giving him access to telephone calls and some texts. The officials said that the move to encourage the use of the signal and other encrypted apps was part of an effort to maintain China and other opponents, from responding to normal phone calls.

But the signal is not approved for classified conversations. They should only take place on special and safe lines, with calls that speak from within a safe structure.

One of Signal’s security features is that users can set messages to disappear after a period of time. Tuesday, the group of American guard dog dogs has filed a case at the Federal District Court of Washington in search of an order of a judge to preserve all the signal messages on the group chat in question.

Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary of the White House, rejected the concerns about the use of the signal.

“The office of the White House consultant provided a guide on different platforms for the best officials of President Trump to communicate in the safest and most efficient way possible,” he wrote on social media, without appointing them.

Trump said he would prefer that officials would meet in person, but he defended their use of the signal and suggested fault for what happened falls on the app, not on Mr. Waltz.

“It’s non -perfect equipment and technology,” he said.

The report was contributed by Adam Goldman, Julian Barnes, Robert Jimison AND Chris Cameron.