[Trump National Security Advisor Exonerated, Culprit is iPhone]
On April 6th, The Guardian cited its sources in reporting that journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to the secret chat group on Signal, an instant messaging app used by U.S. leaders, due to Trump's National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally saving Goldberg's phone number under the name of a senior White House official.
An internal investigation conducted by the White House revealed that this major political scandal within the new presidential administration was caused by a series of accidental events and coincidences.
According to three people familiar with the internal investigation data, during the campaign period, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, sent an email to the headquarters of Trump's campaign team requesting comments. At that time, Brian Hughes, a representative of Trump, copied and pasted the content of this email, including Goldberg's signature and phone number, and then sent it to Mike Waltz, who was a member of the Trump team at that time.
According to interviewees of The Guardian, ultimately Waltz did not respond to Goldberg's request for comment, but accidentally saved Goldberg's phone number under the name of Hughes - Hughes was Trump's spokesperson at that time and is now a representative of the National Security Council. Furthermore, the investigation found that the error in saving the phone number was caused by the characteristics of the iPhone software algorithm.
The Guardian reported, "According to White House information, this number was incorrectly saved during the 'contact suggestion update' process on Waltz's iPhone. Someone described this function as when the iPhone algorithm discovers that an unknown number may be associated with an existing contact, the algorithm will add this number to that contact."
This error went unnoticed until March this year, when Waltz decided to add Hughes to a Signal group chat discussing plans for the attack on Yemen. However, because the number saved under Hughes' name in his phone was actually Goldberg's, the journalist entered the secret chat group instead of the representative of the National Security Council.
After the incident occurred, Waltz immediately stated that he had never met Goldberg and had no communication with him. While speaking on Fox News Channel, he speculated that Goldberg's phone number was "implanted" into his phone because his iPhone saved Goldberg's number.
A source interviewed by The Guardian said that Trump has learned about the investigation results and decided not to remove Waltz from his position.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1828701567115264/
Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of the author.