Mike Waltz, national security adviser to Donald Trump, who’s at the center of a new scandal. His Venmo account has been discovered to be publicly available. The announcement follows major security breaches this summer that put sensitive military plans at risk. Waltz’s friend list on the platform included several high-profile luminaries, which deepened the alarm about possible security vulnerabilities.
The flap started when it was revealed that Waltz’s Venmo account had been set to public. Amongst his 328 friends, he has quite the collection of heavy-hitters. Much more interestingly, he lists Walker Barrett, now a National Security Council staffer; Susie Wiles, current White House chief of staff; and Dan Crenshaw, Republican congressman from Texas. The list featured the usual suspects from campaign megaphone Fox News, including Bret Baier and Brian Kilmeade. It included people connected to Project 2025, an extreme right-wing plan for the U.S. government.
This news follows closely on the heels of a storm involving Waltz’s participation in an unprofessional group chat. That discussion leaked highly sensitive military plans to a political reporter. The chat, held via Signal app, featured planning discussions for an operational planning-focused US conventional military attack on Houthis in Yemen and other regional destabilizing actions. Other attendees of the chat were Fox and Friends host Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense. Waltz has to this day accepted complete responsibility for the breach. At the same time, Donald Trump tried to pin the whole thing on a “lower level” staffer.
The unveiling of the public Venmo account has only further stoked the fire of persistent scrutiny. Wired has contacted the White House for a statement on this issue. In answer to that, both Waltz and Susie Wiles soon made their Twitter accounts private. This action indicates an important recognition of the dangers that are posed by the public disclosure of such information.