WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump on Tuesday characterized an extraordinary security breach of U.S. war plans as a minor transgression, insisting that top administration officials had not shared any classified information as they discussed secret military plans in a group chat that included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine.

“So this was not classified,” Trump said during a meeting with U.S. ambassadors at the White House. “Now if it’s classified information, it’s probably a little bit different, but I always say, you have to learn from every experience.”

Trump also stood by his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who had inadvertently added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal thread, which included Vice President JD Vance and others. In the chat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information on timing, targets and weapons systems to be used in an attack on Houthi militants in Yemen.

“I think it was very unfair the way they attacked Michael,” the president said of Waltz.

Former national security officials said they were skeptical that the information shared by Hegseth before the March 15 strike was not classified, given the life-or-death nature of the operation.

The president and the secretary of defense have the ability to assert, even retroactively, that information is declassified. But officials have refused to answer questions about the specifics of the information or who, exactly, determined that it was unclassified and could be shared on Signal, an encrypted commercial app.

Hegseth denounced Goldberg late Monday, saying he had been “peddling hoaxes time and time again.” But on Tuesday morning, testifying in the Senate, the nation’s top two intelligence officials conceded that the exchanges released by the Atlantic were accurate.

During the meeting at the White House, as reporters peppered the president with questions about the leak, Trump repeatedly turned to Waltz to answer. Waltz tried to largely redirect the focus, lauding the strikes in Yemen and attacking Goldberg.

“This one in particular, I’ve never met, don’t know, never communicated with,” he said, adding that “we are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room.”

Trump called Goldberg a “sleazebag.”

“They’ve made a big deal out of this because we’ve had two perfect months,” Trump said.

Later on Tuesday, Waltz told host Laura Ingraham on Fox News that “I take full responsibility” for the sharing of the plans, adding that he had “built the group” and inadvertently added Goldberg to it even as he maintained that “I don’t text him, he’s not on my phone.”

The Trump administration’s account directly contradicted the one given in Goldberg’s report in the Atlantic on Monday. In his article, Goldberg shared some screenshots and quotes from the group chat, but said he chose not to share information that could be used to harm U.S. military and intelligence personnel.

On Tuesday, Goldberg rejected the Trump administration’s assertions that no classified information was shared, saying simply: “They are wrong.”

Senate hearing

The administration’s attempt to downplay the gravity of the breach came as Democrats denounced the nation’s top spy chiefs — John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence — during a contentious Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Both of them were included on the Signal chat in question.

“This sloppiness, this disrespect for our intelligence agencies is entirely unacceptable,” Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado said Tuesday during the hearing, which had been scheduled before the report in the Atlantic was published. “You need to do better.”

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s vice chair, said the intelligence officials had displayed “sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior,” while Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon suggested that Hegseth and Waltz should resign. Many Democrats have resurfaced clips of Waltz and other Trump allies criticizing 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

During the hearing, Ratcliffe and Gabbard acknowledged the sensitivity of information about strike targets but said no sensitive information from their areas of responsibility had been shared.

Ratcliffe said it was up to Hegseth to determine what information could be shared in an unclassified chat.

Even if the information was not classified, disclosing it in a nonsecure setting could still violate the 1917 Espionage Act. Under that law, what is known as national defense information does not have to be classified for its exposure to be damaging to the country’s security.

White House reaction

“The Atlantic story is nothing more than a section of the NatSec establishment community running the same, tired gameplay from years past,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted on social media.

He added that “at every turn anti-Trump forces have tried to weaponize innocuous actions and turn them into faux outrage that Fake News outlets can use to peddle misinformation. Don’t let enemies of America get away with these lies.”

Other top Trump officials and allies have lashed out at Goldberg, with Hegseth calling him a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist” and Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, writing on social media that Goldberg is “well-known for his sensationalist spin.”

Misuse of Signal?

Goldberg’s report also raised concerns about administration officials using Signal, a nonsecure messaging platform, and setting the messages to automatically delete. The Presidential Records Act, enacted in 1978, states that the government “shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of presidential records,” which includes materials the president’s staff create or receive in the course of their official duties.

Ratcliffe said the White House and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had approved the use of Signal for senior officials, and Leavitt pushed back against those concerns.

“The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible,” she wrote on social media.

Trump said he would prefer for officials to meet in person, but he defended their use of Signal and deflected the blame placed on Waltz.

“It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect,” he said.