On Wednesday, it was Jim Himes’ turn.
The Connecticut congressman, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, faced Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel and others just a few days after The Atlantic published an account of a text chat among top officials who were discussing an imminent attack on Houthi targets in Yemen.
The officials had appeared before a Senate committee on Tuesday. But on Wednesday, the magazine followed up with a transcript of the messages so readers could “reach their own conclusions” about its contents.
Compared to his colleagues from a day earlier, Himes was better positioned to ask why national security officials were using the encrypted app Signal to discuss the attack, how a journalist ended up in the chat and whether information shared was classified.
“Everyone here knows that the Russians or the Chinese could have gotten all of that information, and they could have passed it onto the Houthis, who easily could have repositioned weapons and altered their plans to knock down planes or sink ships. I think that it is by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning dead pilots right now,” Himes said in his opening statement at the hearing.
“The two general officers sitting at the table and the people who work for all of you know that if they had set up and participated in the Signal Chat, they would be gone. And they know that there is only one response to a mistake of this magnitude. You apologize, you own it, and you stop everything until you can figure out what went wrong and how it might not ever happen again. That’s not what happened,” he added.
In the days since, the members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation have ramped up their response. Some of the state’s Democratic lawmakers have called for the resignation of top Trump officials like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and called for investigative hearings into the matter.
But so far, Himes has been the only one in the delegation able to directly ask questions of the Trump White House from his perch on the Intelligence Committee.
Given the publication of the texts a few hours before the Wednesday hearing, Himes gave officials like Gabbard the chance to clear up any testimony from the day before. She maintained that she “did not recall specific details that were included” about the discussion of weapons by Hegseth.
Himes also quizzed Gabbard over her department’s classification guidance, specifically about the indication or advanced warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing an attack. He said that would fall under top secret classification. Gabbard said what was discussed would fall under the Defense Department’s classification system.
Himes, who represents the 4th Congressional District in southwestern Connecticut, has served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for more than a decade. A couple of years ago, he was elevated to become the top Democrat on the panel. The committee has oversight over U.S. intelligence agencies as well as some issues concerning the Pentagon and some other government agencies.
“I’ll say it now and I’ll say it again: Every time we see each other over the next couple of years, you must protect the thousands of patriots who go to work every day under you to keep us safe. You need to go to work every day thinking about their morale, their well-being and their protection. I’ve done intelligence oversight for more than a decade. It’s my job to ask you the tough questions and maybe even make you uncomfortable,” Himes said to the group testifying before his committee.
The Trump administration, including the president himself, has downplayed the group chat, at times arguing that its contents were not classified information and trying to place the blame on the reporter. And officials defended the mission against the Iran-backed rebels earlier this month that killed some Houthi leaders.
“My answers haven’t changed. I used an appropriate channel to communicate sensitive information. It was permissible to do so. I didn’t transfer any classified information, and at the end of the day, what is most important is that the mission was a remarkable success,” Ratcliffe said Wednesday.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this week that President Donald Trump still expressed confidence in his national security team. But she noted that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had taken responsibility for mistakenly adding Goldberg to the group chat when pressed about accountability over the matter.
“Well, we have never denied that this was a mistake,” Leavitt said Thursday outside the White House, according to Politico. “The national security adviser took responsibility for that. And we have said we are making changes.”
Aside from the hearings this week, lawmakers are looking to get more answers and accountability from the Trump administration.
On Thursday, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee requested that the inspector general at the Pentagon start an investigation.
And Connecticut’s U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal joined a dozen other senators in calling on three Senate committees to hold hearings about “why members of the National Security Council were using unclassified, internet-connected smartphones and channels to discuss highly sensitive military information, when there are known ways to tamper with unclassified devices and when it is possible that dozens of foreign intelligence agencies are targeting the unclassified smartphones used by these senior U.S. government officials.”
They are urging the committees to speak with a number of top-level Trump officials in open and closed hearings including Hegseth, Waltz, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Other members of Connecticut’s delegation want Hegseth, who provided some specifics about the weapons and the timing a couple of hours ahead of the strikes, to resign.
“Following new reporting from The Atlantic, it is clear Secretary Hegseth shared sensitive operational details including sequencing, targets and weapons in an unsecure group chat with a journalist that has no security clearance,” U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said in a statement. “Any member of the military, particularly in leadership, who shared this same information would be court-martialed and discharged. Secretary Hegseth is not above the law. He needs to resign or be fired.”
Murphy shared a similar sentiment in calling for Hegseth’s dismissal, arguing that there are two “scandals” — sharing the plans with a reporter, albeit accidentally, and the administration’s response to the leak.
In his multiple appearances and interviews throughout the week, Himes has made the overarching argument that the administration should own the incident as a mistake and take accountability to ensure it will not happen again.
“Until they start dealing with this like adults, because it was a very serious mistake,” Himes said in a CNN interview on Wednesday, “this issue is not going away.”
