A Republican senator's call for an independent investigation of the war chat scandal will likely be complicated by one of president Donald Trump's recent controversial moves.
The Trump administration is scrambling to contain the damage after high-ranking officials inadvertently included a journalist in a group chat using the unsecure Signal app to discuss a military operation that would play out two hours later in Yemen, potentially exposing the discussions to adversaries and putting U.S. service members at risk, and CNN's Kevin Liptak reported the latest developments.
"We may hear from the president again today on this," Liptak said. "We have heard from him the last two days, very clear that he wants to address this himself after his team has struggled to establish a coherent narrative about what exactly happened here, it is evident that the president is just trying to move on, pinning blame squarely on his national security advisor, Mike Waltz, but in other ways, I think, confusing things. Just yesterday, for example, the president saying that the Signal app may be defective. That was hours after his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that this was an approved app for secure and efficient communication. You also heard the president yesterday in the Oval Office allowing at least for the possibility that there could have been classified information contained in this app saying that he just didn't know and saying that he would ask [defense secretary] Pete Hegseth to investigate, essentially to investigate himself whether he put this classified information into a commercial app."
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"So I think a lot of confused messages coming out of the White House, this is all generating a lot of frustration among Republicans on Capitol Hill, who at the very least say that this was sensitive information that should not have been placed in the Signal app," Liptak added.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for an expedited investigation from the Pentagon inspector general, but Liptak said that could hit a snag.
"Of course, the inspector general at the Pentagon has been fired, so it's not exactly clear who will conduct that going forward," Liptak said.
The Trump administration fired 17 inspectors general shortly after Inauguration Day as part of a government-wide purge of internal watchdogs across government, and the Pentagon's IG office is currently being overseen on an acting basis by Steven Stebbins, who had previous served as the principal deputy inspector general.
"You also have been hearing from other administration officials who were part of this app, who are sounding a much graver concern about what exactly happened," Liptak said. "For example, Marco Rubio said yesterday that someone made a big mistake. That was a lot more candid than some of the other officials we've been hearing from, including the top intelligence chiefs who are on Capitol Hill repeatedly declining to say whether this information was even classified. That's led to a number of Democrats saying that they may have actually perjured themselves in their sworn testimony."
"Now the big question in all of this is whether anyone here at the White House will lose their job over this incident," Liptak added. "Of course, this is still playing out. President Trump is someone who very much monitors how the reaction has been going over time. Yesterday, the White House press secretary asked directly whether anyone would be fired and said that Trump continues to have confidence in his national security team."
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