“Obviously, someone made a mistake, someone made a big mistake and added a journalist. No offense to journalists, but you’re not supposed to be on that thing,” Rubio told reporters. “So they got on there, and this happened.”

The secretary of state refused to speak for others involved in the group chat, titled “Houthis PC small group,” which included details of planned aerial strikes against the Houthis. Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were present in the group chat.

Unbeknownst to the 18 intended members of the group chat, Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added, seemingly in a mistake made by Waltz.

“I can speak to myself and my presence on it […] just speaking for my role, I contributed to it twice,” Rubio said during the press conference. “I identified my point of contact, which is my chief of staff. And later on, I think three hours after the White House’s official announcements had been made, I congratulated the members of the team.”

The accidental exposure of details to Goldberg, who never intended to gain access to the group chat, has sparked a firestorm in Washington, D.C., and raised questions about whether the Trump administration is properly handling classified information.

Rubio said Wednesday the leak was “a mistake and shouldn’t have happened.” He added that he was “assured by the Pentagon and everyone involved” that “none of the information on there at any point threatened the operation or the lives of our servicemen.”

“In fact, it was a very successful operation, and it’s an ongoing operation,” he added, speculating that there would be “reforms and changes made” so similar leaks don’t happen again.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday that he wants an immediate and expedited investigation into the scandal by the inspector general.

“I make a lot of mistakes in my life. And I have found that it is best when I just own up to them and say I’m human. I made a mistake. And I am glad, in this case, that no real damage was done. I think that’s probably going to be the approach of the administration, right up to the President,” Wicker said outside the Capitol. “The fact is the plans for the strike — the planning, the timing, the locations — were not revealed to the enemy, and it was a very successful operation.”

He continued, “If early on in this administration there were mistakes, I would hope that they can be rectified. But again, I don’t use Signal. It’s not the type of conversation I’ve ever been in. I’ve never been in a situation room or a chat group that resembled a situation room, and if mistakes were made, I think we’re all human, and they should be acknowledged.”

Rubio is the first member of the group chat to take the complaints raised following the leak seriously.

When asked about the veracity of the story, Hegseth initially attacked Goldberg’s character, calling the editor-in-chief a “deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”

He has since pivoted to scoffing at the idea that his texts announcing the time, target, and weapons involved in the operations were actual “war plans.”

“So, let’s me get this straight,” he wrote on X. “The Atlantic released the so-called ‘war plans’ and those ‘plans’ include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information. Those are some really sh**ty war plans.”

Waltz, speaking Tuesday night on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle, said he “never met” Goldberg and “wouldn’t know him if I bumped into him.”

Waltz, who took “full responsibility,” nonetheless questioned whether it really was a mistake he made that allowed Goldberg into the group chat.

TOM ROGAN: THERE IS NO QUESTION HOUTHI SIGNAL CHAT INCLUDED CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there — somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia, hoax, gone to just all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president United States, and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then get sucked into this group,” Waltz said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday on social media that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed” in the group chat and “no classified material was sent to the thread.” She also said Goldberg is “well-known for his sensationalist spin.”