Musk Tapped to Help Probe Signal Chat Leak Involving Journalist

The investigation seeks to uncover how The Atlantic’s editor accessed a sensitive Signal chat with top U.S. security officials.

Elon Musk at President Donald Trump's first Cabinet meeting, in Washington on Feb. 26, 2025. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

The White House said Wednesday that Elon Musk is now involved in the high-profile investigation into how the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat with top U.S. national security officials, amid ongoing scrutiny over the potential exposure of sensitive military discussions.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Musk’s participation during a March 26 briefing when asked who was leading the probe into the Signal mishap.

“The National Security Council, the White House Counsel’s Office, and also yes, Elon Musk’s team,” Leavitt said. “Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat, again to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again.”

The group chat, titled “Houthi PC small group,” included senior Trump administration officials, including national security adviser Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and others.

According to Goldberg’s March 24 article, he was added to the Signal thread on March 13—two days before the United States launched renewed airstrikes on Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen.

In his account, Goldberg said he observed messages discussing strike timing, weapon platforms like F-18 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones, and other operational planning elements. He also said one user, allegedly Hegseth, shared a timestamp for the drone strike launch.

Goldberg said he chose not to disclose certain details—including the name of a CIA employee allegedly mentioned in the chat—out of concern for sensitive information. A National Security Council spokesman later told The Epoch Times that the conversation Goldberg described in his article “appears to be authentic.”

Waltz said on Fox News on Tuesday that he takes “full responsibility” for the leak, admitting he created the Signal group. “A staffer wasn’t responsible,” Waltz said. “My job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”

While Waltz initially suggested the addition of Goldberg might have been due to a contact mix-up, he said he had never met Goldberg and didn’t know how his number appeared in his phone.

“I can tell you 100 percent I don’t know this guy. I know him by his horrible reputation,” he said, referring to The Atlantic’s previous reporting on President Donald Trump. “And I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don’t text him.”

Waltz added that the investigation into the incident will include determining how Goldberg ended up being added to the Signal chat. “It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out,” he said.

Trump has continued to back Waltz, calling him “a good man” who “learned a lesson.” Trump said the issue likely stemmed from a technical glitch and noted that while Signal was used for its speed, the administration may move away from the encrypted messaging platform going forward.

“We probably won’t be using it very much,” he told reporters. “I don’t think it’s something we’re looking forward to using again.”

The White House has said that no classified information was shared in the chat, a claim echoed by Hegseth, Ratcliffe, and Gabbard during Senate and House Intelligence Committee hearings this week.

After Trump and others, including Gabbard and Ratcliffe, said that neither war plans nor classified information was shared in the group, the outlet on Wednesday published more of the alleged messages in a story titled, “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.”

Goldberg and his co-author said they decided to release the messages because “people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions,” citing what they described as misleading statements from administration officials.

“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the article stated.

In response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on social media that The Atlantic had “conceded” that the communications did not amount to war plans.

The Department of Defense added in a post on X: “They backpedaled the whole ‘war plans’ thing really, really fast.”