Top Senate Democrats are pressing the White House for detailed information about the high-level group text chat in which leaders in the Trump administration discussed sensitive planning information about a coming attack on rebels in Yemen and included a journalist in the conversation.
In a letter to President Trump, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, joined six other senior Democrats whose portfolio covers national security issues to demand “a full accounting” of how the security failure occurred and whether any laws were broken in the discussion on the app Signal. They called on Pam Bondi, the attorney general, to conduct an investigation of a case that the Democrats called one of “astonishingly poor judgment.”
“Let us be clear,” the letter said, “if any American military service member, intelligence official, or law enforcement officer committed such an egregious breach of operational security and endangered the lives of their comrades downrange, they would be investigated and likely prosecuted.”
The White House has dismissed the episode as a minor mistake and top congressional Republicans seemed ready to chalk it up as an inadvertent mix-up, but Democrats were in no mood to do so. After months of being on the defensive as the Trump administration made a series of extraordinary moves on foreign and domestic policy, Democrats see the security lapse as a glaring vulnerability that allows them to showcase administration incompetence.
It also allows them to remind the public and their Senate Republican colleagues that Democrats warned against the confirmation of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, portraying the former Fox News personality and National Guard veteran as inexperienced, unqualified and unsuited for the post. Mr. Hegseth disclosed operational details of the pending attack in Yemen in the text chain, whose existence was reported on Monday by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, who had been added to the chat and was following the discussion.
“These people, Secretary Hegseth, and so many others, are clearly not up for the job,” Mr. Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday. “We warned that confirming them was dangerous, that they would behave recklessly. And unfortunately, unfortunately, we were right.”
On Tuesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called for Mr. Hegseth to be fired, becoming the highest-ranking member of his party in Congress to do so.
The senators stopped short of that in their letter. And while the Trump administration is unlikely to agree to their requests, particularly with no Republicans joining in, Democrats intend to try to keep the spotlight on the breach.
In the letter, the Democrats asked that the full transcript of conversations among the group chat named the “Houthi PC small group” be made available for review in a secure facility. They also sought a full listing of those who participated, when it was created and whether any others were inappropriately added to the chat. The letter also asks whether any participants were overseas when they engaged in the chat.
“We are aware that the director of national intelligence, and possibly others, appears to have been overseas while this group chat was active, making the entire discussion more vulnerable to interception by foreign adversaries,” the letter said, urging the president to direct those involved to preserve the records of the conversations.
Besides Mr. Schumer, others signing the letter were Senators Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee; Jack Reed of Rhode Island, senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee; Mark Warner of Virginia, senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee; Chris Coons of Delaware, senior Democrat on the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, and Gary Peters of Michigan, senior Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee.
“We expect your administration to address this dangerous lapse in security protocol — whether intended or not — with the utmost seriousness, and to uphold the ethic of accountability that our nation holds sacred,” they wrote to the president.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/us/senate-democrats-trump-leak-atlantic.html
