Mike Waltz used the signal application on White House Day before expulsion

The former White House Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, seems to be communicating with other Trump officials in Signal, after President Donald Trump discouraged the use of the messaging application following the escape controversy called “Signalgate.”

A photo taken by Evelyn Hockstein of Reuters during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday shows Waltz holding his phone under the table, with the application of open and visible encryption text, just one day before Trump retired from his post.

It also shows that Waltz has active conversations with at least six other users, including one identified as “JD Vance”, the vice president.

The names of other users in the photo are partially obscured by the hand of Waltz, but they seem to be the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East and his Russian-Ukraine de facto negotiator.

Visible time marks in the threads indicate that they were active as recently as Tuesday or Wednesday morning, the day of the cabinet meeting.

When comments were requested, the White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, told CNBC: “As we have said many times, Signal is an approved application for the use of the government and is loaded on government telephones.”

However, it was the use of the signal of the high officials of the Trump administration, including Waltz, earlier this year to discuss pending military strikes that triggered one of the greatest controversies so far in Trump’s second mandate.

In mid -March, Waltz was part of a thread with Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others in which the group discussed the next air attacks on Houthi objectives in Yemen.

Waltz inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic Chief Editor, thread.

Goldberg reported that the application was used to discuss confidential military information, causing calls from Democrats so that Waltz and Hegseth renounce.

Trump publicly defended Waltz, and his administration sought to justify his actions by stating that none of the information discussed about the threat was classified.

The Atlantic responded by publishing the entire text thread, which led the retired and current military officers to question how this information could be considered not classified.

Pentagon’s internal guard dog has opened an investigation into Hegseth about its use of what he called a “commercial messaging application for official businesses.”

In an interview with The Atlantic published two days before Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, Trump was asked if he had learned any policy lesson from the Signalgate scandal.

“I think we learned: maybe I don’t use a sign, okay?” Trump said.

“If you want to know the truth. Frankly, I would tell these people not to use Signal, although many people have used it,” he said in the interview, which was held last Thursday. “But, whatever it is, whoever has it, who has it, would not like to use it.”

Trump said it doesn’t use Signal.

Reuters’ photo caught attention on social networks on Thursday afternoon, hours after Trump announced his plan to nominate Waltz to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations.

The announcement confirmed previous reports that Waltz would soon leave his role as national security advisor, marking the first big shake of Trump’s second mandate in office.

Rubio will serve as an interim national security advisor until that position is filled, Trump said in Truth Social.

“I feel deeply honored to continue my service to President Trump and our great nation,” Waltz wrote in X later on Thursday.