You will remember all the fuss in late March about how US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz invited The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat as administration officials laid plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. When the magazine published a piece on the breach, officials’ reflexive response was to deny that any classified information had been shared, but that appeared to be untrue, which prompted The Atlantic to publish the chat in all its unexpurgated glory. I urge you to scroll through it, if you haven’t already. It does include US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing launch times of F-18 jets, strike drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Waltz has seemingly been spared the axe, for now.

It has also come to light how, exactly, the blunder happened. It’s a tortured tale, but as The Guardian reported, Goldberg mailed the Trump campaign about a story that criticised the president’s attitude towards wounded service members. The campaign then sought the help of Waltz, and forwarded Goldberg’s mail to Brian Hughes, Trump’s spokesperson, who then copied and pasted the mail, including Goldberg’s signature and phone number, into an SMS, and sent it to Waltz. Waltz then saved Goldberg’s number on his iPhone, but under the Hughes contact. A month later, he added Hughes to the now famous “Houthi PC small group”, and Goldberg came with him.