The German news outlet Der Spiegel reportedly found private contact information online for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and national security adviser Mike Waltz, who were involved in the Signal group chat security breach.
The Der Spiegel report said each individual’s email address and phone number were readily available on the dark web.
Hegseth’s mobile number and active email address were sent to Der Spiegel by a commercial provider of personal information for marketing purposes.
A search of the leaked user data revealed that the email address and, in some cases, even the password associated with it, could be found in more than 20 publicly accessible leaks and traced back to a WhatsApp account for the Defense secretary that was recently deleted, according to the outlet.
Waltz’s contact information was obtained by the same unnamed provider and was linked to his Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Signal accounts, in addition to several passwords for the adviser’s email address in leaked databases, Der Spiegel wrote.
Gabbard’s email address was found on Reddit and WikiLeaks with connections to her WhatsApp and Signal profiles. Ten other leaks revealed the same ping-backs.
The Hill reached out to Hegseth, Waltz and Gabbard for comment.
The discovery comes as legislators call on Hegseth and Waltz to resign over mistakenly adding The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat in which plans for U.S. airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen were laid out.
President Trump described the breach as a “glitch” earlier in the week, after admitting Waltz learned a lesson about best practices for virtual communication. However, Trump also suggested the media was embellishing concerns about defense conversations on Signal’s platform, after some reporters accused the administration of brushing over the security breach.
“I don’t know about downplaying. The press up-plays it. I think it’s all a witch hunt,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “The attacks were unbelievably successful, and that’s ultimately what you should be talking about, I think.”
Waltz and Hegseth maintain that classified information was not shared and are unsure how the journalist was added to the messaging chain.
“I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else,” Waltz told Fox News.
“Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean, is something we’re trying to figure out,” he added.
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