President Donald Trump on Wednesday downplayed US defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s role in sharing highly sensitive matters of national security to a group chat that included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.

“Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, despite screenshots showing the defence secretary sharing plans for US strikes in Yemen with the Signal chat earlier this month.

Trump continued, “Hegseth? How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, look — it’s all a witch hunt.”

Trump’s comments arrived just moments........

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