Trump team scrambles to handle fallout from Signal chat

The Trump administration sought on Tuesday to contain the fallout after a magazine journalist disclosed he had been inadvertently included in a secret group discussion of highly sensitive war plans, while Democrats called on top officials to resign over the security incident.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe - both of whom were in the chat - testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that no classified material was shared in the group chat on Signal, an encrypted commercial messaging app.

But Democratic senators voiced scepticism, noting that the journalist, Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth posted operational details about pending strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, "including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing".

Committee members said they planned - and Gabbard and Ratcliffe agreed to - an audit of the exchange. The Senate's Republican majority leader, John Thune, said on Tuesday he expected the Senate Armed Services Committee to look into Trump administration officials' use of Signal.

"It's hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified," Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said at the contentious hearing, which featured several sharp exchanges. Gabbard repeatedly referred questions about the exchange to Hegseth and the Department of Defence.

She and Ratcliffe will face more lawmakers on Wednesday when the House of Representatives will hold its annual "Worldwide Threats" hearing. Democrats said they planned to discuss the Signal chat.

The revelation on Monday drew outrage and disbelief among national security experts and prompted Democrats - and some of President Donald Trump's fellow Republicans - to call for an investigation of what they called a major security breach. "I am of the view that there ought to be resignations, starting with the national security adviser and the secretary of defence," Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said at the hearing.

But Trump voiced support for his national security team when questioned about the incident at a White House event on Tuesday with Michael Waltz, his national security adviser, who mistakenly added Goldberg to the Signal discussion.

Trump said the administration would look into the use of Signal. He said he did not think Waltz should apologise, but said he did not think Waltz and the team would be using Signal again soon. Later, in an interview with Newsmax, he indicated that a lower-level colleague of Waltz's had been involved in adding Goldberg to the chat.

Waltz, in an interview with The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, said, "I take full responsibility" for the breach, as he had created the Signal group, but he emphasised there was no classified information shared. Waltz said the situation was "embarrassing" and that the administration would "get to the bottom" of what went wrong. He said Goldberg's number was not saved in his phone and he does not know how the journalist was mistakenly added to the chat group.