The Biden administration authorized the use of the unclassified Signal messaging app for official communications before top Trump administration officials began using it, according to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).
Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, appeared on Fox News on Tuesday and suggested that the outcry over top Trump officials using the encrypted messaging platform to communicate is misdirected as the use of the app began under the previous administration.
On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed that he was mistakenly added to a Signal group of top Trump officials discussing plans to attack the Houthis. A Senate Intelligence Committee hearing scheduled for after Cotton’s appearance on Fox News featured two of the officials also included in the group, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
“I bet a bunch of those senators that you see at the hearing today are using Signal, as well, to speak to each other or to speak to their aides,” Cotton said ahead of the expected questions over the Signal group at the hearing. “It is my understanding that the Biden administration authorized Signal as a means of communication that was consistent with presidential record-keeping requirements for its administration, and that continued into the Trump administration.”
“It’s simply another messaging app like the iMessage app on your iPhone or email servers that every administration has set up in which senior administration officials can communicate with each other,” Cotton said.
I joined Fox & Friends to preview today’s open Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the Worldwide Threat Assessment. pic.twitter.com/F807jZsKcC
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) March 25, 2025
Revelations about the Signal group chat, parts of which were published in The Atlantic on Monday, sparked questions about National Security Advisor Mike Waltz’s future in the administration. Goldberg reported that he had been added to the sensitive group chat by an account labeled “Michael Waltz.”
President Donald Trump dismissed suggestions that he could fire Waltz over the Signal group on Tuesday. Trump told Fox News that “he’s not getting fired” and called the Signal group a “mistake,” but added that “nothing important” was shared in the thread.
Goldberg said that sensitive information was relayed in the Signal thread that had the potential to damage “American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East” if it were to be released. He did not publish the alleged messages he referred to.
