By Jeff Zeleny and Kevin Liptak, CNN

Washington (CNN) — When Donald Trump selected Mike Waltz to serve as national security adviser, the choice was widely seen as win-win: A combat veteran with four Bronze Stars would bring his judgment to the White House and his deep-red Florida House district was safe in Republican hands.

Now, both assumptions seem far less certain, as Waltz struggles to restore his credibility inside the West Wing after an embarrassing security breach and Republicans scramble to hold onto his old seat in a special election Tuesday that will stand as one of the most significant tests of Trump’s popularity since taking office.

With questions still swirling around Waltz on Monday, the White House sought to turn the page. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump stands by Waltz and an investigation had been closed into how the national security adviser invited The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief into a chat on an encrypted messaging app where Trump’s team discussed military plans to strike Yemen.

“As the president has made very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team,” Leavitt told reporters. “This case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned. There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can, obviously, never happen again. We’re moving forward.”

Leavitt declined to elaborate what steps had been taken and didn’t say whether the review – promised last week by the president, and also said to include the White House counsel’s office and Elon Musk – shed any new light onto how Jeffrey Goldberg was invited to join the chat, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed a highly sensitive military operation for taking out Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The president’s decision to keep Waltz on board – for now, at least – does not mean that Waltz has resolved all of the questions surrounding a bizarre scandal that even the president conceded was the biggest “glitch” of the new administration. The president and other advisers were reticent to give in to a scandal, people familiar with the matter say, particularly involving The Atlantic, a magazine that Trump loathes.

While he has publicly downplayed the matter, Trump was frustrated by the appearance of ineptitude by his aides and in disbelief that Goldberg would be communicating with anyone in his close inner circle.

Trump determined early last week that he didn’t want to fire anyone over the messages, wary of appearing to cave to outside pressure. But that didn’t stop him from questioning other advisers and allies about how to proceed, officials said, including whether he should fire Waltz for adding Goldberg to the Signal chat discussing attack plans in Yemen.

Trump’s public support for Waltz was at its most effusive last Tuesday, when he told reporters he believed his aide was “doing his best” and “will continue to do a good job” while stopping short of blaming him for the snafu.

By Wednesday, he seemed somewhat less enthusiastic.

“It was Mike, I guess. I don’t know,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.

By Thursday, Trump was continuing to consult with senior members of his administration about the wisdom of keeping Waltz on staff.

He met with Vice President JD Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Sergio Gor, the head of presidential personnel, according to people familiar with the meeting, first reported by The Wall Street Journal. He also was venting in conversations with political allies that Waltz’s old Florida congressional seat had become a much tougher race for Republicans than initially expected.

Dismissing Waltz would not prompt another contentious confirmation battle, something Trump and other White House officials are eager to move beyond. The national security adviser position, while one of the most powerful within the US government, doesn’t require Senate approval. Trump has steadfastly stood by Hegseth, who survived a bruising confirmation battle in January.

Yet as a new week began, Trump remained set on not shaking up his team, despite the lingering resentment he has voiced to allies over what transpired.

Long-standing questions around Waltz in Trump world

But the president has yet to learn the biggest question of all: How Goldberg’s number ended up on Waltz’s telephone. Waltz himself has offered less-than-clear explanations in public.

“Somehow it gets sucked in. It gets sucked in,” he said on Fox News last week, in an interview that Trump and other senior officials found less than impressive.

The Signal incident was, in Trump’s mind, the first glaring misstep of his second term, and marred what he believes to be a successful opening of his second administration that so far has avoided some of the pitfalls of his first term.

Even before the Signal episode unfolded last week, there were voices in Trump’s orbit questioning whether Waltz was enough of an ideological loyalist to serve in the high-profile job.

He previously served in the administration of President George W. Bush and had publicly questioned Trump ahead of the 2016 election, saying after Trump criticized Sen. John McCain that he “hasn’t served this country for a day in his life” and accusing him of “cozying up to Putin.”

Before assuming his role at the White House, Waltz also vocally encouraged American assistance for Ukraine, even as Trump and some of his allies questioned its value to the United States.

So, too, have there been questions about his manner in the West Wing, where he is now a senior-level aide rather than a principal, as he was on Capitol Hill.

Waltz, 51, is part of a large contingent of Floridians in the top ranks of the White House. But during the first two months of the administration, Waltz rubbed some Trump loyalists the wrong way, particularly for hawkish foreign policy views, people familiar with the matter say.

The former congressman also carried himself with a sense of entitlement, in the view of some aides, rather than as a member of the national security staff. White House officials disputed any such characterization, saying all advisers and Cabinet secretaries serve as the pleasure of the president.

Waltz was elected to Congress in 2018 to fill the seat of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and won reelection three times. An Army Ranger, Waltz was selected to serve in the elite Green Beret special forces, notching multiple tours to Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa.

National security advisers do not have a particularly strong track record in Trump’s West Wing. He ran through four during his first term: Michael Flynn, whom he fired weeks after taking office in 2017 for lying about his contacts with Russia; HR McMaster, who left after differences on Syria and Russia; John Bolton, who Trump fired after 17 months (Bolton said he quit); and Robert O’Brien, who lasted until the end of the term.

The repeated hirings-and-firings of the top national security aide — along with the West Wing’s other top job, chief of staff — contributed to a sense of chaos in Trump’s first term that he has been intent on avoiding this time around.

Trump sought to put the matter to rest this weekend, saying he’d held no discussions about dismissing Waltz or anyone else involved in the matter.

“Nope, I’ve never heard that,” he told NBC News. “And nobody else makes that decision, but me and I’ve never heard it, and I don’t fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts.”

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