President Donald Trump's National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has had a particularly bad month, following a story that made it clear he was responsible for a massive security breach.

Waltz is the person who is said to have added a journalist to a Signal group chat about a military strike to take place in Yemen, as The Guardian reported.

The person in question, journalist and Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to the group after being mistakenly saved as another person Waltz's phone, according to the White House.

Lots of missteps

This is one of several mistakes that came to light when an internal investigation was launched following the news that the group messaging platform was being used to talk about classified or secret information.

According to reports from Washington, Trump considered firing Waltz following the episode but was more angered that Waltz had Goldberg's number than that the breach took place.

Trump has never made any secret of the fact that he is no fan of the publication, but seems to have taken a "no harm, no foul" approach to his wieldy national security team's actions.

Waltz was eventually saved, because Trump was not interested in the Atlantic having the satisfaction of forcing out someone so close to the top of his Cabinet.

The Audit

The White House information technology staff conducted a “forensic review” of the leaks and found that Waltz's phone had saved Goldberg's number in an improbable sequence of events that began when Goldberg emailed the Trump campaign in October.

Three internal investigation sources said Goldberg emailed the campaign about a piece criticizing Trump's treatment of injured service veterans.

The campaign used Waltz, their national security surrogate, to counter the story.

Then-Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes copied and pasted Goldberg's email, including the signature block with his phone number, into a text message to Waltz to brief him on the story.

The response

According to the sources, Waltz did not end up calling Goldberg, but in a surprising turn of events, he accidentally saved Goldberg's number on his iPhone under the contact card for Hughes, who is now the National Security Council spokesperson.

Just one day after Goldberg's story was published, on October 22, Waltz made an appearance on CNN to defend Trump.

“Don’t take it from me, take it from the 13 Abbey Gate Gold Star families, some of whom stood on a stage in front of a 30,000-person crowd and said how he helped them heal,” Waltz said.

From the White House

As for the White House, they have claimed that the number was accidentally saved as a "contact suggestion update" by Waltz's iPhone. This is a phenomenon described as an international function where a number is added to an existing contact if they are suspected to be related.

This mistake was unnoticed until Waltz attempted to add Hughes to the Signal group chat, and put Goldberg's number in instead, adding it to the “Houthi PC small group” with top officials.

Waltz said immediately after the accident that he had never met or communicated with Goldberg. There was also a suggestion during an interview that Goldberg's number might have been "sucked" into the phone and saved.