It Was Mike Waltz, Not Pete Hegseth, Who Added Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal Chat

The Trump administration scandal involving a Signal chain that inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic has continued to dominate the news in the days since it was first reported. Jeffrey Goldberg reported the news that he had been inadvertently included, saying that he initially believed the whole thing to be misinformation before he realized that actual attack plans were being discussed in the chain.

The chain included several incredibly powerful people inside the Trump administration, including the vice president and the secretary of defense. As the scandal continues to spiral, though, and the Trump administration struggles to explain it, many are wondering who is actually at fault for adding Goldberg to the group. Here's what we know.

Goldberg was added to the group by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who added everyone to the group and according to Goldberg's reporting, sent the first message. While Waltz is chiefly responsible for that aspect of the breach, it's worth examining the fact that no one else in the group thought it prudent to check who was there before they started to discuss highly classified plans.

Pete Hegseth has come under fire because he's the one who sent the actual attack plans outside of a secure channel. Hegseth's breach was not in inviting Goldberg but in sending classified information through a publicly available app that could, presumably, be accessed by a foreign government or other intelligence service. He has received the lion's share of the attention, even as Waltz has also spoken out about the leak.

The question underlying the fact that Waltz added Goldberg is why does Waltz have Goldberg's phone number to begin with? In an interview on March 26, Goldberg said that he wouldn't be offering any explanation for how the two of them know one another.

"I'm just not going to comment on my relationship with Mike Waltz," he said. For his part, Waltz has said that he has "never met" Goldberg and couldn't pick him out of a lineup.

He went on to add that Goldberg is the "bottom scum of journalists."

A photo has emerged of the two of them together at the French Embassy in 2021.

"If your eyeballs see us together, then I guess your eyeballs are seeing us together," Goldberg said of the photos.

Waltz has suggested that Goldberg must have found a way to add himself to the Signal chat or that his joining the chat was the result of some sort of technical error or breach. Goldberg has called that claim "ludicrous."

"I got a message request from Michael Waltz. I accepted the message request. That's what happened," he said.

Given the way Signal works, it's highly unlikely that Goldberg got in without an invite. What's more likely, then, is that Goldberg is a contact in Waltz's phone, and Waltz simply added him to the group by accident. Then, war plans were shared and no one noticed he was there.