Top Senate Democrats are pressing the White House for detailed information about the high-level group text chat in which leaders in the Trump administration discussed sensitive planning information about a coming attack on rebels in Yemen and included a journalist in the conversation.777win

In a letter to President Trump, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, joined six other senior Democrats whose portfolio covers national security issues to demand “a full accounting” of how the security failure occurred and whether any laws were broken in the discussion on the app Signal. They called on Pam Bondi, the attorney general, to conduct an investigation of a case that the Democrats called one of “astonishingly poor judgment.”

“Let us be clear,” the letter said, “if any American military service member, intelligence official, or law enforcement officer committed such an egregious breach of operational security and endangered the lives of their comrades downrange, they would be investigated and likely prosecuted.”

The White House has dismissed the episode as a minor mistake and top congressional Republicans seemed ready to chalk it up as an inadvertent mix-up, but Democrats were in no mood to do so. After months of being on the defensive as the Trump administration made a series of extraordinary moves on foreign and domestic policy, Democrats see the security lapse as a glaring vulnerability that allows them to showcase administration incompetence.

It also allows them to remind the public and their Senate Republican colleagues that Democrats warned against the confirmation of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense,9x999 cassino portraying the former Fox News personality and National Guard veteran as inexperienced, unqualified and unsuited for the post. Mr. Hegseth disclosed operational details of the pending attack in Yemen in the text chain, whose existence was reported on Monday by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, who had been added to the chat and was following the discussion.

“These people, Secretary Hegseth, and so many others, are clearly not up for the job,” Mr. Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday. “We warned that confirming them was dangerous, that they would behave recklessly. And unfortunately, unfortunately, we were right.”

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