WASHINGTON — The White House has closed its review of national security adviser including a journalist on a group chat about airstrikes in Yemen, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday — as looming tariffs already are tamping down focus on the controversy.
President Trump and top advisers publicly presented a united front after The Atlantic’s anti-Trump editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed he was included in the sensitive conversation on the encrypted Signal app this month — despite internal doubts about Waltz’s claim that he had no prior relationship with Goldberg.
“As the president has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team. And this case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned,” Leavitt told reporters on the White House driveway.
“There have been steps made to make sure that something like that can obviously never happen again and we are moving forward,” Leavitt added.
“The president and Mike Waltz and his entire national security team have been working together very well if you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team.”
The controversy, which dominated political news last week, already is being overshadowed by a raft of tariffs due to take effect on Wednesday.
Trump says April 2 will be “Liberation Day” for US trade as he orders reciprocal tariffs on foreign countries. Wednesday also is the adoption date for his 25% tariffs on auto imports and his 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico.
Leavitt previously said that the National Security Council, the White House counsel’s office and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk were collaborating on an investigation — as Waltz claimed that Goldberg’s number was mysteriously “sucked into” his phone.
She did not describe any findings from the investigation.
Goldberg on Sunday accused Waltz of lying about having prior communications with him, but provided no details or evidence.
A Trump administration official explained to The Post that the president’s refusal to fire Waltz was in part made out of a desire to deny Democrats a “scalp,” which could compound the scandal and invite demands for Cabinet-member participants in the chat to be fired next.
Goldberg is well-known for a 2020 article that claimed Trump disparaged US troops buried in France as “suckers” and “losers” — claiming that Trump lied about a helicopter being unable to fly to a ceremony commemorating the fallen soldiers from the world wars.
The lede of that bombshell report was debunked by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) release proving that the Navy made a “bad weather call” cancelling the flight, but Goldberg never corrected the article.
