The White House is desperately trying to make the Signal scandal story disappear. “This case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Monday afternoon. “There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again, and we’re moving forward.”

President Donald Trump had voiced his own exhaustion on Sunday, complained about the “never ending Signal story” that was “so old and boring, but only used because we are having the most successful ‘First One Hundred Presidential Days’ in the history of America, and they can’t find anything else to talk about.”

This is politician speak for, “I don’t want to talk about this any longer. Won’t you please drop it too?” If only it were that easy! What a boon that would have been to former President Biden, or Clinton, or Nixon! But the Trump administration cannot assume that a hostile media will forgo a succulent lede merely to save them from embarrassment.

Fortunately, for the Trump administration, the operation with compromised operational security still turned out to be a success. Leavitt could therefore appeal to results, “the president, and [National Security Advisor] Mike Waltz, and his entire national security team have been working together very well, if you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team.”

But that hasn’t stopped the Signal scandal from entering the investigation phase.

The Department of Defense Acting Inspector General (IG), Steven Stebbins, has initiated an “evaluation of the Secretary of Defense’s reported use of a commercially available messaging application for official business,” he notified Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday. Stebbins filled the position in acting capacity after President Trump fired formed DOD inspector general Robert Storch, along with other department IGs, in January.

Stebbins initiated the inquiry in response to a request from “the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee,” Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), respectively.

“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” Stebbins stated. “Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”

The Pentagon acting IG is not the only government official who is scrutinizing the Trump administration’s compliance with classification regulations and with records retention requirements. In response to a left-wing group’s lawsuit about classification violations, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the federal government last week to “preserve all Signal communications between March 11 and March 15,” the time window in question. Boasberg has already clashed with the Trump administration over the deportation of illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats and the media have launched their own concurrent investigations. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have opened an investigation into Waltz’s use of Gmail, while Politico has scrutinized Waltz’s use of Signal more generally.

Amid all the investigations, perhaps the best defense the Trump team can offer is that the Biden administration adopted similar practices, and no one ever looked askance. Multiple intelligence officials stated that former President Biden’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines used Signal “all the time and on her personal phone,” even as the National Security Agency (NSA) warned that Signal presented a security risk because the commercial app is “not approved to process or store nonpublic unclassified information.”

Amid these investigations, news broke Wednesday that anywhere from three to 10 national security officials had been fired, including General Timothy Haugh, director of the NSA and head of U.S. Cyber Command. Yet reports connected these firings not to the Signal scandal, but to a White House visit by right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who alleged that these employees were disloyal to Trump. “We’re always going to let go of people — people we don’t like, or people that take advantage of [us], or people that may have loyalties to someone else,” said Trump on Thursday.

As the Signal scandal shows no sign of dissolving anytime soon, the good news for President Trump is that a CNN poll released Sunday suggested that it does “not seem tied to evaluations of Mr. Trump overall.” The poll, conducted on March 27 and 28, showed the president’s approval and disapproval ratings locked in a dead heat at 50% apiece.