US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth commented on the scandal with the Atlantic journalist, who had allegedly accidentally ended up in a chat with senior US officials discussing strikes on Yemen's Houthis; according to the secretary, no military plans were sent in the messenger.
The members of the "Houthi PC small group," including accounts under the names of Hegseth, US Vice President JD Vance, and White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, "engaged in a policy discussion really in earnest," US Atlantic magazine's chief editor Jeffrey Goldberg said on Monday.
"Nobody was texting war plans," Hegseth told journalists upon arriving in the US state of Hawaii.
The US official called Goldberg a "deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist, who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again."
Later, US President Donald Trump said that he knew nothing about the scandalous publication of the Atlantic magazine, and that he was not "a big fan" of the magazine.