The Republican chair and the ranking Democrat on the Senate armed services committee have written to the acting watchdog of the Department of Defense to demand an investigation into the scandal over how a senior American journalist was added to a Signal app group chat in which top government figures shared details of US airstrikes in Yemen at the weekend.
Addressing Steven Stebbins, the acting inspector general at the Pentagon, the senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the committee chair, and the Democratic senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island wrote: “On 11 March 2025, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, was reportedly included on a group chat on the commercially available communications application called Signal, which included members of the National Security Council.”
The bipartisan letter continued: “This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen. If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know.”
Related: The Signal chat leak raises questions about accountability in Trump’s cabinet
The senators went on to make a list of demands including an assessment of facts and circumstances, and of “any remedial actions taken as a result”, a summary of Pentagon policies regarding such breaches of policies and processes, an assessment of whether other departments have different policies on the subject, an assessment of whether classified information was leaked through the Signal chat and “any recommendations to address potential issues identified”.
The senators also say they will schedule a briefing from Stebbins.
Stebbins holds the Pentagon inspector general role in an acting capacity because Donald Trump fired his predecessor amid a round of such terminations in January – a highly controversial move by the US president given the notionally independent status of such officials.
Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who set up the Signal chat and added Goldberg, and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary who then shared sensitive military material including the timing of a forthcoming air strike on Houthis in Yemen, have denied wrongdoing and attacked Goldberg and the Atlantic magazine.
So far, Trump appears not to be minded to sack anyone over the scandal, the Guardian reports, and no one has offered to resign.
This despite high fury from Democrats and evident disapproval also coming from some Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, told CNN: “We recognize the seriousness of this indiscretion, and we’re going to get the inspector general’s report we’ve asked for … and that means the bottom line, we want as much information as we can get, and then we’ll do our own assessment.”
He added: “But right now, I think they screwed up. I think they know they screwed up. I think they also learned their lesson, and I think the president made it very clear to them that this is a lesson they don’t want to forget.”
The former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta told CNN on Thursday morning that the use of Signal and the inclusion of a journalist in the group was a “serious breach” of national security and that those most responsible should be “punished and fired”. He questioned whether overseas allies would now feel able to trust the US with sharing sensitive information.
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