White House Investigation Implicates Siri Suggestions in ‘Signalgate’ ⇥ theguardian.com

Hugo Lowell, the Guardian:

According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, [the Atlantic’s Jeffrey] Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of [Mike] Waltz, their national security surrogate.

Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.

Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.

Then, when Waltz went to add Hughes to the Signal chat, so this goes, he instead added Goldberg. Presumably, this is related to Siri suggestions. This version of events sounds plausible to me, if a little too perfect, but stranger things have happened.

The distrustful and cynical voice deep inside me wants to think Waltz has been a source or contact for Goldberg, and that this is a neat way to keep that secret. There is no evidence for this. The White House’s explanation really does sound right. But try telling anyone they should trust the results of an internal investigation into one of the most dunderheaded security breaches in living memory — even surpassing the time when a couple of lawyers during the first Trump administration were blabbing within earshot of a New York Times reporter.