Senator Mark Warner says Hegseth should resign over group chat leak

“If the level of this information had gotten out, and it hadn’t been a responsible journalist, but it was somebody that could have turned this over to Iran or the Houthis, Americans could have died – plain and simple,” US Sen. Mark Warner said.

The service members stationed in Virginia and deployed overseas and their families deserve better than what is playing out in Washington after high-level members of the Trump administration discussed war plans and potentially classified information in a group message, US Sen. Mark Warner said on a call with reporters Wednesday. 

Warner’s comments come after The Atlantic’s top editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that President Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz inadvertently added him to a group chat where sensitive war maneuvers were being discussed. 

Goldberg published some of the messages on Monday, and they showed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Waltz, and others discussing attack plans against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. After members of the chat and other Trump administration officials denied any attack plans were shared in the thread and sought to discredit Goldberg, he published additional screenshots on Wednesday, which contradict the claim that no battle plans were discussed. 

Warner said on Monday it was “mind boggling” that senior national security officials like Hegseth would share such sensitive information in a group chat without knowing who all was in the group chat. 

Virginia is home to a large presence of military service members and their families, with a high concentration in Hampton Roads. Warner said they deserve national security leaders who take better care of secret information without risking American lives. 

 “If the level of this information had gotten out, and it hadn’t been a responsible journalist, but it was somebody that could have turned this over to Iran or the Houthis, Americans could have died – plain and simple,” Warner said on Wednesday’s call with reporters. 

Warner, the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Monday took part in a grilling of the Trump administration’s top security officials over the military actions discussed in the group chat on an app called Signal.

Warner said on Wednesday’s call that Hegseth should “do the right thing and resign,” and that Waltz committed a “fireable offense” by apparently unknowingly adding The Atlantic editor to the group chat where sensitive war maneuvers were being discussed.  

“These jobs are serious jobs that require serious people,” Warner said. “This gross dereliction of security procedures demands that someone be held responsible.”

Virginia Del. Michael Feggans of Virginia Beach said in an interview with The Dogwood that every service member and his or her spouse know not to talk about operational plans. Feggans, an Air Force veteran, said if a rank-and-file member had done something similar to what Hegseth did in the Signal chat, they would probably be discharged. 

“It just goes in the face of everything you’re taught in the military,” Feggans said. “To come from some of the highest parts of the Department of Defense and the national security apparatus is more than discouraging. It’s disrespectful and dangerous.”

Feggans added that the Signal scandal is another example of the kind of chaos and confusion the Trump administration is causing across the country and another reason Democrats want to win big in Virginia this fall to be able to stand up to Trump.