US President Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from the group chat war texting scandal, saying he “wasn’t there” and suggesting the messaging App could be “defective”.

Trump on Thursday (AEDT) continued to play down the leak, calling it a “witch hunt”, as The Atlantic published all the war details its editor Jeffrey Goldberg had accidentally been privy to.

Trump’s administration has sought to contain the fallout from the revelation that the March 15 Signal group chat of top Trump advisers included Goldberg on the encrypted messaging app Signal.

“There was no harm done because the [US] attack [on Houthi militants in Yemen] was unbelievably successful that night,” said Trump.

He said Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was “doing a great job,” adding that the Signal chat leak “doesn’t bother me”.

Trump suggested that Signal may be a “defective” platform and “isn’t very good”.

“Everybody uses Signal, but it could be a defective platform, and we’re gonna have to find that answer,” Trump said.

He offered no evidence as to why the Signal app could be defective.

Goldberg, who had initially declined to publish the chat details, did so on Thursday (AEDT).

The messages revealed Hegseth texted about plans to kill a Houthi militant leader in Yemen two hours before a military operation that was meant to be shrouded in secrecy.

The revelation that highly sensitive attack plans were shared on the commercial messaging app, possibly on personal mobile phones, has triggered outrage in Washington and calls from Democrats that members of Trump’s national security team be fired over the leaks.

Hegseth has repeatedly denied texting war plans, and Trump and his top advisers say no classified information was shared. That has bewildered Democrats and former US officials, who regard timing and targeting details as some of the most closely held material ahead of a US military campaign.

“I think that it’s by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning dead pilots right now,” Democrat Jim Himes of Connecticut said at a hearing of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

Republican Senator Roger Wicker, who leads the Pentagon’s oversight committee in the Senate, joined calls for an independent probe and said the texts appeared so sensitive, “I would have wanted it classified”.

The chat did not appear to include any names or precise locations of Houthi militants being targeted or to disclose information that could have been used to target US troops carrying out the operation.

Pentagon officials aware of the planning believed that information Hegseth texted was classified at the time, one US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity, raising questions over whether, when and how Hegseth’s text messages may have been declassified.

Hegseth’s text started with the title “TEAM UPDATE” and included these details, according to The Atlantic:

Hours later, national security adviser Mike Waltz confirmed to the group the killing of the Houthis’ top missile expert.

“We had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz wrote.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Hegseth was “merely updating the group on a plan that was underway and had already been briefed through official channels”.

Senior US national security officials have classified systems that are meant to be used to communicate secret materials.

But CIA director John Ratcliffe testified at a Senate hearing that Waltz set up the Signal chat for unclassified co-ordination and that teams would be “provided with information further on the high side for high-side communication”.

Waltz has said he takes full responsibility for the breach as he created the Signal group.

But on Wednesday, Waltz also played down the disclosure, saying on X: “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent.”

-AAP/with AP