Here's How Journalist Got on White House Signal Chat

Multiple sources have come forward to explain how President Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat on Signal in which airstrikes on Yemen were discussed. The timeline the sources, who were briefed on the White House's internal investigation into the matter, laid out for the Guardian and CBS News:

• Back in October, Goldberg emailed the Trump campaign asking for a comment regarding an article about the then-candidate's feelings toward injured military service members.
• The campaign wanted to loop in Waltz, so Trump's then-spokesperson Brian Hughes copied and pasted Goldberg's email, including the signature block containing the journalist's phone number, into a text message that he then sent to Waltz.

• Waltz never did contact Goldberg, but the White House review indicates that Waltz's iPhone performed a "contact suggestion update," in which it detects a phone number that may be related to an existing contact and adds the number to the contact.
• Or, perhaps, the phone suggested that Waltz add the number to Hughes' contact. The two reports differ on what exactly happened here and whether it was an automatic move performed by the phone or an action triggered by the phone and then carried out by Waltz, but either way, the sources say Goldberg's number ended up listed under the "Brian Hughes" contact on Waltz's phone. (Apparently, this is indeed a thing that can happen.)
• Waltz managed to call and text Hughes multiple times using the correct phone number, but somehow, when he went to add Hughes to the Signal group chat, he instead added the number that actually belonged to Goldberg.

(This explains how, as Waltz said previously, Goldberg's contact information apparently got "sucked into" the group text despite the fact that Waltz had never contacted Goldberg.)