Trump official set up more than 20 national security crisis Signal chats: report
President Donald Trump's administration officials have used over 20 Signal chats to give updates on various crises worldwide, according to a new report.
Politico reported Wednesday that the practice of setting up Signal chats to discuss highly sensitive national security information is more frequent than previously known.
Staff for National Security Advisor Mike Waltz "regularly set up chats on Signal to coordinate official work on issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, Middle East policy, Africa and Europe," the report said, citing four people who were added to some of the chats.
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Two of the four said that they were in at least 20 Signal chats similar to the one uncovered in a bombshell report from a reporter at The Atlantic. That chat revealed specifics about a military strike in Yemen.
"It’s a more extensive use of the app than previously reported and sheds new light on how commonly the Trump administration’s national security team relies on Signal, a publicly available messaging app, to conduct its work," said Politico.
Signal boasts being an end-to-end encryption app for communications, but the Pentagon issued a warning mere weeks ago that there were security vulnerabilities, reports revealed.
In a memo sent to all staff at the Pentagon, the team wrote, "Russian professional hacking groups are employing the 'linked devices' features to spy on encrypted conversations."
The warning also said that Google identified Russian hacking groups "targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest."
"Please note: third party messaging apps (e.g. Signal) are permitted by policy for unclassified accountability/recall exercises but are NOT approved to process or store nonpublic unclassified information," the memo explained.
The Trump administration has denied that there was any conversation about classified information in the chat despite the fact that it contained specific times that attacks were set to launch.