Two Pa. lawmakers avoid questioning Tulsi Gabbard about group chat leak controversy

For the second straight day, two top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration were grilled on Capitol Hill after taking part in a group chat on Signal with other cabinet members in which sensitive information about airstrikes was mistakenly mentioned in front of a journalist.

Testimony Wednesday from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe to the House Intelligence Committee largely echoed their comments Tuesday to a similar committee in the Senate, where they claimed no classified information was mentioned and described the leak as a “mistake.”

“It was a mistake that a reporter was inadvertently added to a Signal chat with high level national security principals having a policy discussion about imminent strikes against the Houthis and the effects of the strikes,” Gabbard testified. “The conversation was candid and sensitive, but as the president’s national security adviser stated, no classified information was shared.”

A full transcript of the chat, published Wednesday by The Atlantic, includes a post by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth providing “the exact times of warplane launches, strike packages and targets — before the men and women flying those attacks against Yemen’s Houthis this month on behalf of the United States were airborne,” according to the Associated Press.

“No one is texting war plans,” Hegseth told reporters on the tarmac in Honolulu Wednesday ahead of a trip to Guam, the Philippines, and Japan. “There’s no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information.”

U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), one of three Pennsylvania representatives on the House Intelligence Committee, did not question Gabbard or Ratcliffe on the Signal group chat during the committee’s open-door session on Capitol Hill.

Instead, Fitzpatrick asked a single question on the reauthorization of Section 702 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was updated last year to allow the government to collect certain communications between U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent who represents Bucks County and a small part of Montgomery County, said Monday he “would presume” there would be a House investigation of the leak, but stopped well short of criticizing Trump officials or calling for members to resign.

That fell in line with other Republicans, who have avoided delving into the controversy have downplayed the leak as a mistake to learn from rather than a national security issue to examine. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Trump still had “great trust” in his national security team and just one top Republican — Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee — had openly called for an investigation as of Wednesday afternoon.

“What I think is most important here is not the way this information was communicated, but the action that was taken to actually attack the Yemen rebels who have been targeting our sailors and international shipping Saudi Arabia for more than a year,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Scott Perry (R., Pa.), an outspoken supporter of Trump who attempted to overturn Pennsylvania’s election results in 2020, also didn’t press Gabbard or Ratcliffe on the Signal chat. Instead, Perry used his time Wednesday to ask questions involving immigration and China, including the claim the country was buying up “wide-scale” swaths of land in the United States.

As of the end of 2023, China held 277,336 acres of U.S. land, less than 1% of all foreign-held land within the country, according to a joint report by the Farm Service Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Foreign-held land represents less than 2% of all land in the United States, the report noted.

U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D., Pa.) was more willing to question Trump’s top intelligence officials, taking issue with Gabbard’s comment that Hegseth had the ultimate authority over what information in a group chat was classified or declassified.

“You are the DNI,” Houlahan said during the hearing, adding the chat included many cabinet members and “did not have the auspice of being a DOD chat.”

Houlahan, a former Air Force officer who represents most of Chester County, said she believed Hegseth should resign and pressed a reluctant Gabbard to commit to investigating the incident fully.

“Yes, I will follow the law,” Gabbard testified.

Houlahan also blasted Ratcliffe, who confirmed he was on the chat, for suggesting Democrats were putting politics before national security by focusing on the discussion of airstrikes on Signal.

“I find it offensive for you to accuse me, as a Democrat, of not caring about national threats,” Houlahan said. “It’s my job to ask these questions because when I served in the military, and I served in classified environments, had this happened to me, I would have walked my resignation in immediately.”

“Communicating these sorts of things in Signal is not OK,” Houlahan added. “Targets, times, those kinds of things are absolutely classified, and we all know it. I know it. These people know it. You all know it.”

U.S. Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.) was among the Democrats who called for Hegseth to resign Wednesday after the “shocking” details of the Signal chat were published.

“As someone who worked in the Situation Room before, I cannot believe Hegseth would recklessly text info that could put a target on our pilots and service members,” Kim wrote on social media. “He needs to resign.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), a retired Navy combat pilot and astronaut, also called on Hegseth to step down, describing the former Fox News host as “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen.”

“We’re lucky it didn’t cost any servicemembers their lives, but for the safety of our military and our country,” Kelly wrote on social media.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries was the highest-ranking Democrats to call for Hegseth to resign telling Trump in a letter the former Fox News host was “unqualified” to serve as defense secretary.

“The so-called secretary of defense recklessly and casually disclosed highly sensitive war plans — including the timing of a pending attack, possible strike targets and the weapons to be used — during an unclassified national security group chat that inexplicably included a reporter,” Jeffries wrote in the letter, which was obtained by the New York Times. “His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives and likely violated the law.”