‘Mike does not know Jeffrey Goldberg and does not recall ever meeting him,’ a spokesperson said.
National security adviser Mike Waltz has reiterated that he does not know The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, after the journalist suggested over the weekend that Waltz was not being truthful.
“Mike does not know Jeffrey Goldberg and does not recall ever meeting him,” Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told The Epoch Times in an email on March 31.
Goldberg was added to a Signal chat group involving Waltz and other high-level Trump administration officials, an addition for which Waltz has said he’s responsible.
At the same time, Waltz has said he does not know Goldberg. “I can tell you for 100 percent: I don’t know this guy. Wouldn’t know him if I bumped into him, if I saw him in a police lineup,” he said during a recent appearance on Fox News.
Waltz also said that Goldberg was added because his contact information replaced that of another.
“If you have somebody else’s contact and then somehow it gets sucked in,” Waltz said.
Goldberg responded on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying that “phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones” and that he didn’t know what Waltz was talking about.
“Very frequently in journalism, the most obvious explanation is the explanation. My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone,” Goldberg said. “He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s simply not true.”
In recent days, a photograph showing Waltz standing in front of Goldberg at a 2021 event has been circulating.
Launch of #TheWillToSee Thanks Amb @Ph_Etienne . Thanks for being there: @alinazary @BayanRahman @JeffreyGoldberg @DavidTafuri @michaelgwaltz @sinam56 Tom Kaplan Emily Hamilton @JMfreespeech & others pic.twitter.com/c1PRwBWuLd
— Bernard-Henri Lévy (@BHL) October 30, 2021
Hughes said Waltz still maintains he does not know Goldberg.
“As a member of Congress, he met thousands of people at dozens upon dozens of public events,” the National Security Council spokesman said.
President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he does not plan on firing any officials who were in the chat.
“I don’t fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts,” he said.
