Donald Trump advisor Mike Waltz takes ‘full responsibility’ for Signal chat leak on US war plans for Yemen

Mike Waltz, US National Security Advisor, on Tuesday claimed “full responsibility” for accidentally adding a senior journalist to a group chat in which top American officials discussed impending strikes in Yemen.

"I take full responsibility. I built the group; my job is to make sure everything's coordinated," Mike Waltz told Fox News host Laura Ingraham in his first interview on the security breach.

He added that he does not personally know The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added to the chat group on Signal.

President Donald Trump, however, downplayed the texting of sensitive plans for a military strike against Yemen's Houthis this month, saying it was “the only glitch in two months” of his administration as Democratic lawmakers heaped criticism on the administration for handling highly sensitive information carelessly.

Talking to NBC News, Donald Trump said the lapse “turned out not to be a serious one", and expressed his continued support for Mike Waltz.

Mike Waltz, according to an article posted online Monday by The Atlantic, appeared to have mistakenly added the magazine's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a chat that included 18 senior administration officials discussing planning for the strike.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said. He also appeared to point the blame on an unnamed Waltz aide for Goldberg being added to the chain. “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there."

Waltz said he was not sure how Goldberg ended up on the chat.

"This one in particular, I have never met, don’t know, never communicated with,” Waltz said.

Later on Tuesday, Waltz said in an appearance on Fox News Channel's “The Ingraham Angle” that he built the message chain and that White House technical experts were trying to figure out how Goldberg's contact “may have been sucked in.”

On Signal, Trump said “we won’t be using it very much” in the future. “That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly.”

One official reported to be on the Signal chain, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, acknowledged during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday that she was travelling overseas during the exchange. She wouldn't say whether she was using her personal or government-issued phone because the matter is under review by the White House National Security Council.

(With inputs from AFP, AP)