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Amid efforts to downplay the extraordinary security lapse exposed by the Atlantic after Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally included in a group chat with top Trump administration officials discussing war plans, the magazine on Wednesday published new exchanges that confirmed operational details—including launch times—of the upcoming mission to bomb Houthi targets across Yemen were discussed in the Signal chat.
The decision to publish the messages, Goldberg and reporter Shane Harris wrote, came as the administration, including President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, smeared the publication and denied that classified information was discussed in the chat.
“The statements by Hegseth, [Director of National Intelligence Tulsi] Gabbard, [CIA director John] Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions,” the magazine wrote. “There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.”
The messages, which you can read in their entirety here, appear to undermine the Trump administration’s claim that war plans were not included in the Signal chat. Yet in another staggering refusal to bend to reality, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted that the release amounted to a concession by the Atlantic that the scandal was a “hoax.”
