By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
One of President Trump’s best moments in his debate with Joe
Biden:
He doesn’t fire people. He never
fired people. I’ve never seen him fire anybody. I did fire a lot. I fired Comey
because he was no good. I fired a lot of the top people at the FBI, drained the
swamp. They were no good. Not easy to fire people. You’d pay a price for it,
but they were no good. I inherited these people. I didn’t put him there. I
didn’t put Comey there. He was no good. I fired him.
This guy hasn’t fired anybody. He
never fires. He should have fired every military man that was involved with
that Afghan — the Afghanistan horror show. The most embarrassing moment in the
history of our country. He didn’t fire?
Did you fire anybody? Did you
fire anybody that’s on the border, that’s allowed us to have the worst border
in the history of the world? Did anybody get fired for allowing 18 million
people, many from prisons, many from mental institutions? Did you fire anybody
that allowed our country to be destroyed?
This morning, the president has plenty of good reasons to
fire his entire national-security team. He won’t do this, of course, but this
means the president must shrug off half his cabinet discussing classified
information — details about an impending U.S. military strike! — on an insecure
system.
Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in The Atlantic:
On Tuesday, March 11, I received
a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal
is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and
others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of
delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald
Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request
was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I
didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did
think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious
relationship with journalists — and Trump’s periodic fixation on me
specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading
as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me. It is not at all uncommon these days
for nefarious actors to try to induce journalists to share information that
could be used against them. . . .
Two days later — Thursday — at
4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat
group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”
One minute later, a person
identified only as “MAR”—the secretary of state is Marco Antonio Rubio — wrote,
“Mike Needham for State,” apparently designating the current counselor of the
State Department as his representative. At that same moment, a Signal user
identified as “JD Vance” wrote, “Andy baker for VP.” One minute after that,
“TG” (presumably Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, or
someone masquerading as her) wrote, “Joe Kent for DNI.” Nine minutes later,
“Scott B” — apparently Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, or someone spoofing
his identity, wrote, “Dan Katz for Treasury.” At 4:53 p.m., a user called “Pete
Hegseth” wrote, “Dan Caldwell for DoD.” And at 6:34 p.m., “Brian” wrote “Brian
McCormack for NSC.” One more person responded: “John Ratcliffe” wrote at 5:24
p.m. with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not
publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer.
The principals had apparently
assembled. In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group,
including various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President
Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief
of staff; and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for
Stephen Miller. I appeared on my own screen only as “JG.”
Our Kayla
Bartsch offered the plausible theory that Waltz meant to include U.S. Trade
Representative Jamieson Greer, in the Signal chat instead; Jeffrey Goldberg
noted that he only appeared on the screen as “JG.”
Goldberg wrote that one post from Hegseth “contained
operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information
about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security
Council, issued a statement declaring, “The message thread that was reported
appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was
added to the chain.”
Problem one is that the entire national security team is
using Signal to discuss classified information. Signal is not secure; earlier
this year, the Google Threat Intelligence Group warned that Russia-backed
hacking groups have “developed techniques to compromise encrypted messaging
services, including Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram.” As noted above, Witkoff was
on the chain, and he was in Moscow while these messages were exchanged.
Problem two is that Waltz accidentally invited journalist
Goldberg.
Problem three is that on the Signal chat, Hegseth boasted
about the operational security of the assembled Trump team. Goldberg wrote, “In
his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth
wrote to the group — which, at the time, included me — ‘We are currently clean
on OPSEC.’” Not as clean as you think, Mr. Secretary!
Problem four is that one day after the chat started, director
of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard posted on X, “Any unauthorized
release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated
as such.”
Any unauthorized release, huh?
Every U.S. government official on that Signal text chain
who discussed classified information committed a crime. Under 18
U.S. Code § 798, “Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes,
transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person . . .
classified information . . . shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not
more than ten years, or both.”
Republicans spent years rightfully arguing that Hillary
Clinton committed a crime when she kept classified information on her private
server — including these particular Republicans!
Back as a Fox News host in 2016, Pete
Hegseth asked, “How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build
allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them
because of their gross negligence or their recklessness in handling
information?” And in 2023, while discussing Joe Biden’s handling of classified
information, Hegseth fumed, “If at the very top, there’s no
accountability . . . that’s the two tiers of justice that exists.”
In
2023, Mike Waltz tweeted, “Talk about a DOUBLE STANDARD: Biden’s sitting
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent top secret emails to Hillary
Clinton’s private account and the DOJ didn’t do a DAMN THING about it. No
wonder Americans are losing faith in our justice system.”
This is not holding these officials to some arbitrary or
unfairly high standard. This is holding them to their own publicly declared
standards.
Now we’re going to hear a lot of excuses, and a lot of
insistence that this case doesn’t really count.
Hegseth, disappointingly, seems to think he can get out
of this by attacking Goldberg. “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly
discredited so-called journalist, who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes
time and time again. . . . This is a guy who peddles garbage, this is what he
does.”
Except . . . the White House National Security Council
spokesman already said the messages appear to be authentic. And House
Speaker Mike Johnson. The Atlantic published screenshots.
Hegseth insisted, “Nobody was texting war plans.”
No, just “operational details of forthcoming strikes on
Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be
deploying, and attack sequencing” and when the attack would begin.
That’s a very Bill Clinton-ian definition of “war plans.”
As of this writing, there’s no indication that President
Trump intends to discipline anyone over any of this. At the White House, Trump was asked about it and responded:
Trump: I don’t know anything
about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s
going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine. But I know nothing
about it. You’re saying they had what?
Q: They were using Signal to
coordinate on sensitive materials—
Trump: Having to do with what?
Having to do with what? What were they talking about?
Q: The Houthis.
Trump: The Houthis? You mean the
attack on the Houthis? Well, it couldn’t have been very effective, because the
attack was very effective, I can tell you that. I don’t know anything about it.
You’re telling me about it for the first time.
(If Trump is telling the truth, it reflects very badly on
Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth. When there is a screwup, the president deserves to
learn about it from his own people, not through the media. Goldberg said he
emailed Waltz, Hegseth, Ratcliffe, Gabbard, and other officials Monday morning,
asking if the text chain was authentic, and NSC spokesman Hughes replied two
hours later. Trump was asked about it at an event that began at 2 p.m. Eastern.
You can’t tell me that none of those officials could get ahold of the president
all day.)
Just four days ago, a Department of Defense employee pled
guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified material; he’s
scheduled to be sentenced on June 17 and faces up to five years in prison. On January 17, a former CIA analyst pled guilty to
retaining and transmitting top-secret information to people who were not
entitled to receive it; he’ll be sentenced in May for a maximum of ten years on
each count. In November, a former member of the United States Air National Guard was sentenced to 15 years
in prison after pleading guilty to six counts of willful retention and
transmission of classified information.
It’s the same old story. If you’re low-ranking, you face
serious criminal charges for mishandling classified information. If you’re
high-ranking and a famous name, you usually get let off with minimal consequences,
sometimes no consequences at all.
I like Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth. I want them to
succeed. The country’s security depends upon their successful execution of
their duties and good judgment. But these are lapses in decision-making that
are inexcusable. Waltz must know that Signal isn’t a secure system for
communication, and he’s got to know better than to just add any old “JG” to the
chat list without checking. Hegseth must know he can’t just discuss highly
secret war plans on an insecure system. A lot of critics argued Hegseth was too
young and inexperienced to run the Pentagon. Making a mistake like this makes
his critics look prescient.
At NR today, John Noonan makes the argument that the country needs Mike
Waltz to remain as national security adviser, and urges, “Let He among us who
has never fat fingered a text, or an email, or tweet cast the first stone.”
Maybe we don’t need to get rid of Waltz or Hegseth. But
it would have been nice if either man had notified the president immediately
and taken responsibility for the screwup. At this point, there’s no sign that
happened; instead of taking responsibility, Hegseth seems to think he can get
out of this by blaming Goldberg.
Our
Dan McLaughlin: “If only we had a federal agency under the digital services
that was focused on efficiency and headed by a famously brilliant tech
innovator to figure out how to let a few dozen senior people talk to each other
securely.”
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