President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Waltz, was pressed by Democrats on Capitol Hill on Tuesday but did not acknowledge any wrongdoing related to a sensitive group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal in March.
Mr. Waltz, during a hearing on his nomination to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, repeated the Trump administration’s defenses of the group chat where
senior officials discussed sensitive details
of a military operation in Yemen. He was ousted from his national security position following the revelation that he
added a journalist
to the group chat that included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials.
Mr. Waltz told lawmakers that “there was no classified information on that chat,” and did not address why he added the journalist to the discussion on Signal.
It was the first time Mr. Waltz had appeared before Congress since he was removed from his post. Mr. Trump passed the national security adviser role to Mr. Rubio and nominated Mr. Waltz for the U.N. role in May.
Mr. Waltz echoed the Trump administration’s defense over the use of Signal, saying that the app was recommended by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the Biden administration.
In December
, the agency directed “highly targeted individuals” in senior positions to use messaging apps with “end-to-end encryption, such as Signal” as a safer alternative to SMS text messaging.
But Democrats told Mr. Waltz that he and other top officials should have known better than to share war plans over a commercial messaging app, and pressed him to take responsibility for what Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, called an “amateur move.”
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