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Elon Musk and the team at the Department of Government Efficiency will assist the White House and National Security Council in investigating how a journalist was added to a Signal group chat with national security officials, the White House Press Secretary said Wednesday.
After the shocking news that the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was added to a group with cabinet members about a U.S. military operation in Yemen, lawmakers and the public have called for investigations into how the incident occurred.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said those requests would be filled by the National Security Council, White House Counsel’s Office and Musk’s DOGE team.
“The National Security Council, the White House Counsel’s Office and also yes, Elon Musk’s team,” Leavitt told reporters.
“Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat. Again, to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again.”
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has taken responsibility for the blunder, telling reporters Tuesday that he inadvertently added Jeffery Goldberg, a journalist, to the group chat. However, Waltz has struggled to explain how Goldberg became a contact in his phone, asserting that he doesn’t know him nor text him.
President Donald Trump suggested that Goldberg may have added himself, saying the technology allows for someone to “get onto those things.”
While an internal investigation may be underway, five of the cabinet members in the Signal group chat, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe face a federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit, brought by the nonprofit American Oversight, is asking a judge to order the cabinet member to preserve the Signal messages, claiming the use of Signal – an encrypted but commercially available app – violates federal law.
Although The Atlantic characterized the messages between officials as “war plans” and “attack plans” containing classified information, the White House contends that no classified information was exchanged.
Messages published by The Atlantic on Wednesday show that Hegseth disclosed the exact time U.S. military personnel were taking off to conduct strikes in Yemen as well as the time of those strikes.
