We knew they were unqualified going in
A lot has happened since Monday morning. Judge Patricia Millet of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit admonished Trump administration attorneys over its deporting hundreds of Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador: “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.” Later in the day we learned that a clusterfuck of Trump officials (my new collective noun) discussed plans for attacking Yemen over an encrypted but unsecured Signal chat that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
Goldberg writes that using Signal for this exchange “may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of ‘national defense’ information.” He appears to have been invited to the chat by Michael Waltz, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.
National. Security. Adviser.
“You have got to be kidding me,” tweeted Hillary Clinton who the GOP savaged for years over her handling of emails.
“I’ve worked at the White House for both Democrat and Republican Presidents and I’ve never seen this kind of mishandling of classified info. It’s sloppy at best and puts the military involved in these sensitive operations at risk,” tweeted Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D). “Laws like the Espionage Act, the Presidential Records Act, and the Federal Records Act lay out clear rules for how you can handle classified information — and those laws apply to every one of the people on that text chain,” the former CIA analyst and DoD official added.
Use of Signal by these officials may be construed as an attempt to evade those record-keeping requirements (and later FOIA disclosure), Goldberg notes (gift link):
Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved.
“Under the records laws applicable to the White House and federal agencies, all government employees are prohibited from using electronic-messaging applications such as Signal for official business, unless those messages are promptly forwarded or copied to an official government account,” Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told Harris.
“Intentional violations of these requirements are a basis for disciplinary action. Additionally, agencies such as the Department of Defense restrict electronic messaging containing classified information to classified government networks and/or networks with government-approved encrypted features,” Baron said.
“Mistakes were made”
The New York Times offered reaction from several GOP officials:
“It appears that mistakes were made, no question,” said Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who is the chairman of the chamber’s Armed Services Committee. “We’ll try to get to ground truth and take appropriate action.”
Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN that his panel would send an inquiry to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and then determine whether a fuller investigation is warranted.
But Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, dismissed the idea of additional investigations or discipline for the officials involved. “I’m told they’re doing an investigation to find out how that number was included, and that should be that,” Mr. Johnson told reporters at the Capitol, referring to White House officials. “I’m not sure that it requires much additional attention.”
Speaker. Of. The. House.
The White House and Republicans in Congress will work to bury this story with all speed. And/or investigate Goldberg for revealing it. The last thing they’ll do is take responsibility for it. If Waltz goes down for this or Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth or Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard, count me surprised. (Waltz was not subject to Senate confirmation.) This security breach isn’t a matter of “You knew I was a snake before you took me in.” We knew these people were unqualified and incompetent before their Senate confirmations. And confirmed them anyway.
Oh @PeteButtigieg is mad pic.twitter.com/YjNEnP888A
— chyea ok (@chyeaok) March 24, 2025
Update: See Marcy Wheeler’s deconstruction of the Signal affair.
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