A day before President Trump removed him from his work as a national security adviser, Michael Waltz checked his phone during a cabinet meeting of the White House – perhaps there were cameras in the room.
A photographer for Reuters recorded the moment on Wednesday, with Mr. Waltz from the side, sitting with other suitable officials around a table. When zoomed in, the photo clearly shows what was on his phone screen: a list of his conversations about what a changed version of the signal of the Message app seems to be.
The content of the screen indicates that Mr Waltz was in conversation with various top officials from Trump Trump: vice president JD Vance; Tulsi Gabbard, the National Intelligence Director; Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the middle East; and Marco Rubio, the State Secretary, who was announced As an interim replacement by Mr. Waltz on Thursday. Fragments of some messages are visible.
Mr. Waltz seemed to use a changed version of the signal that is sold by Telemessage This retains copies of messages to meet government rules regarding the storage of records. The screen shows a request for him to verify his “TM SGNL -PIN”. Timenspels indicate that the communication was just as recent as the morning of the cabinet meeting.
In response to reports of the photo, Steven Cheung, the Witte House communication director, said in a after On X that “signal is an approved app that is loaded on our government telephones.” Smarsh, the company of Portland that has telemessage, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nevertheless, the moment led more questions about the treatment of potentially sensitive information by a top security officer. Mr Waltz has been examined since the revelation in March that he accidentally recorded a journalist when he has a Group chat About signal to discuss details of a military operation in Yemen.
Democrats at the time called For the resignation of Mr Waltz and Pete Hegseeth, the Minister of Defense, referring to the recklessness of discussing sensitive defense information outside of secure government channels.
Aides said that President Trump did not want to be seen as giving in to the news media by Mr Waltz at that time. On Thursday, the President removed Mr. Waltz from his security role and nominated him as an ambassador in the United Nations.
Mr. Trump has discouraged his staff from using signal, which codes messages but has not been approved for sensitive government communication. “I think we learned: maybe don’t use a signal, okay?” he said in one interview With the Atlantic Ocean last month. “I would honestly say that these people should not use a signal, although it was used by many people.”
Earlier, he triggered concern about the signal leak, and rejected Concern about sharing attack plans on the app as a ‘waste of time’.
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