Members of Congress are outraged after military plans were leaked on the encrypted messaging app Signal, and our own Katie Couric went deep with two of them to get their reactions to this headline-grabbing story.
The controversy erupted Monday, when The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed he had been inadvertently added to the chat, in which cabinet officials openly discussed the details of an upcoming military attack in Yemen. Among those in the thread were Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who have faced intense scrutiny over the breach. They insisted in their testimonies to Congress that no classified information was shared on the thread, though The Atlantic’s subsequent report suggested otherwise. Now, lawmakers across the political spectrum are demanding accountability, while the Trump administration dismisses the fallout as a “witch hunt.”
In separate interviews with Katie, Independent Sen. Angus King and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy strongly criticized the administration’s handling of the breach.
“They’re working on semantics — whether or not it was classified or whether it was war plans or an attack plan,” King said. “The point is, it was information that should not have, in any way, shape, or form, been compromised.”
Murphy echoed that sentiment, saying it’s “pure gaslighting” to suggest the information wasn’t classified. He warned that such a lapse could have jeopardized “the safety of our troops and the success of the mission.”
While King acknowledged that mistakenly messaging the wrong person is common, he argued that top Trump officials “should know better” — especially when handling highly sensitive material on an unauthorized platform. He also noted that when he’s in his home state of Maine, he visits the nearest FBI office to use a secure communications facility for national security discussions with Washington officials.
“The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars to set up secure communication channels — Signal ain’t one of ’em,” King said, adding that the Pentagon recently warned employees against using the app, even for unclassified information, due to the risk of foreign hacking.
But Murphy contended that the mistake wasn’t just a tactical blunder — it involved multiple legal violations, including the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act. “At some point, the Secretary of Defense has to be held accountable for the criminal laws he violated, because the rule of law in this country only works if everybody is held to account,” he said.
For a deeper dive into the situation on Capitol Hill, takes on Trump’s tension with the judiciary branch, and the Democratic response to what’s unfolding in Washington, watch Katie’s full conversations with King and Murphy in the videos above.
