According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate.
Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then-Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.
Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.
The mistake went unnoticed until last month when Waltz sought to add Hughes to the Signal group chat – but ended up adding Goldberg’s number to the 13 March message chain named “Houthi PC small group”, where several top US officials discussed plans for strikes against the Houthis.