#signals leak

[victusinveritas]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Brandi Buchman at HuffPost:

A public watchdog group sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a slew of other Trump administration officials Tuesday after a journalist revealed he was inadvertently added to a text chain discussing U.S. war plans. The lawsuit, brought by the watchdog group American Oversight and first reported by HuffPost, requests that a federal judge formally declare that Hegseth and other officials on the chat violated their duty to uphold laws around the preservation of official communications. Those laws are outlined in the Federal Records Act and, according to lawyers for American Oversight, if agency heads refuse to recover or protect their communications, the national archivist should ask the attorney general to step in. On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported that national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added him to a Signal group chat with more than a dozen Trump administration officials and aides including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, homeland security adviser Stephen Miller and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. CIA Director John Ratcliffe told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he was also in the Signal chat. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would not admit whether she was a participant, though Goldberg reported she was; instead, she said the matter was “still under review.” As American Oversight lawyers pointed out in their lawsuit Tuesday, Rubio is also the acting archivist of the United States and, as such, “is aware of the violations” that allegedly occurred. He is also “responsible for initiating an investigation through the Attorney General for the recovery of records or other redress,” the lawsuit said. Goldberg’s article only shared a portion of the messages he received over two days. Most of the texts were “procedural” and “policy” talk, he wrote, but that changed on March 15.

Good to see that scumbag Pete Hegseth got sued for his role in the Signal chat leaks. DUI Hire Hegseth must go!

[onlytiktoks]

[justgot1]

Archive link

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion...

...Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story...

...Waltz and the other Cabinet-level officials were already potentially violating government policy and the law simply by texting one another about the operation. But when Waltz added a journalist—presumably by mistake—to his principals committee, he created new security and legal issues. Now the group was transmitting information to someone not authorized to receive it. That is the classic definition of a leak, even if it was unintentional, and even if the recipient of the leak did not actually believe it was a leak until Yemen came under American attack.

All along, members of the Signal group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security. 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.”

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Absolutely astonishing. Holy shit, the incompetence. In normal times, heads would be rolling. But let's watch as they do absolutely nothing. Incredible.

[skull-pun]

The Atlantic journalist could have exposed a lot more than he did if he'd stayed in that group chat.

But no, he decides to leave because he thought it wouldn't be "appropriate" to stay.

Bro when did journalists become such pussies.

[nederlandsespoorwegen]

Would any of yall wanna make a group chat together, I kinda want a place where I can share train pics that really aren't very interesting

[victusinveritas]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana held two town halls over the weekend, despite her party’s policy of hiding from constituents who are angry about the actions of the Trump administration.  Spartz, who fashions herself as something of a maverick, spoke before a crowd that demanded the removal of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and other top Trump officials after leaking classified war plans on a Signal group chat. "No, I will not demand their resignations," she said. Spartz repeated GOP talking points regarding President Donald Trump’s illegal deportations and defended the overreach of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. She was met with chants of “do your job” from the crowd, clearly upset by her obstinance.

[...] The crowd’s outrage during each of Spartz’s meetings mirrored every GOP-led town hall since Trump and Musk began dismantling popular federal programs like Social Security and Medicaid. Republican lawmakers—Spartz included—have been complicit, passing a budget with massive cuts to government programs to fund tax breaks for the rich.

Republican town hall meetings and angry crowds are the story, and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) is the latest to be bombarded by constituents pissed off at the Trump/Musk coup.

[onlytiktoks]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[theknightlywolfe]

If you thought the Signal Whiskey Leaks stupidity and record avoidance was bad:

"National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and other members of the Trump administration’s national security team used personal Gmail accounts for government communications, according to a report from The Washington Post.

...

Gmail is even less secure than Signal, the encrypted messaging app that’s available to the public. The use of the email service is the most recent instance of top national security officials using less-than-secure methods of communication.

A top aide to Waltz also used Gmail, a commercial email service, to conduct highly technical conversations with co-workers at other agencies, which included sensitive military positions and weapons systems in connection with an ongoing conflict, according to emails seen by The Post reveal.

...

A senior administration official told The Post, however, that Waltz has also created other Signal chat groups with members of the Cabinet on other sensitive issues, such as Somalia and the Russian war in Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal initially reported on those chats on Sunday."

[sharkchunks]

[tiggymalvern]

Almost the funniest thing about the Signal group chat and the Atlantic journalist is that the White House can't even decide on what spin to put on it. Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt are denying that it ever happened, saying that Goldberg is a lying liar who lies. Tulsi Gabbard initially denied that she was in ever the group chat, then changed her mind and went with, 'Nothing in the group chat was all that secret, so no biggie.' The CIA director has confirmed that yes, it happened, and he was in the group.

Meanwhile, the White House staff seem to be roughly evenly divided over whether to blame it all on Mike Walz and sack him, or call it a minor glitch like Trump and pretend it never happened.

[victusinveritas]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Liz Plank at Airplane Mode:

There was a moment, early in the Trump presidency, when many of us made a critical mistake. We looked at the cruelty on display, the kidnapping of legal residents, the abortion bans, the dismantling of environmental protections, and assumed we were witnessing competence. Not moral competence, of course, but a kind of ruthless, calculating efficiency. We treated the administration like a well-oiled fascist machine, analyzing every tweet and press conference as if they were chess moves in some grand authoritarian strategy. We were wrong. What we were actually witnessing was something far more dumber: the elevation of mediocrity as a governing principle. The Trump White House isn’t some sinister cabal of geniuses. It’s a jobs program for the profoundly unqualified, a four-year experiment in what happens when you hand the keys of government to men who peaked in high school. Their only real qualification? The ability to coddle the most insecure man in America. These aren’t masterminds. They’re the dumbest guys in the room, and that’s why they got promoted. Because their political project has never been about governing. It’s about preserving a system where men like them succeed not through talent, but through entitlement.

This is what patriarchy looks like in practice. It doesn’t just privilege men, it selects for the worst among them. The loudest, the angriest, the most insecure. It rewards obedience over insight, loyalty over leadership, ego over ethics. And while it absolutely hurts women, it also traps good men in a world where they are forced to answer to worse ones. A world where being thoughtful, decent, or competent makes you less likely, not more, to rise. That’s the paradox at the heart of patriarchy: it promises men power, but only if they agree to give up everything that makes power worth having: integrity, growth, connection, purpose. It’s not just bad for women. It’s bad for men. And it’s terrible for democracy. And no scandal reveals this better than signalgate, a blunder so humiliating it makes Veep look like a pbs documentary. Michael Waltz (the actual National Security Advisor) accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to a signal group chat discussing bombing Yemen. Yes. A journalist. In a signal chat. About Yemen.

And when that incompetence inevitably implodes, the women who helped elevate these men are often the first to fall. Just look at Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who is having a really bad 48 hours after trying to cover for the boys’ fiasco by claiming that “no classified or intelligence equities were included.” But her statement was quickly contradicted by multiple sources, including a U.S. defense official who confirmed the information was “highly sensitive” and resembled material typically briefed to the president in secure settings. And then in the world’s greatest this you? The Atlantic published he texts showing “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.” You can read their stupid texts for yourself here. And subscribe to The Atlantic while you’re at it. The MAGA movement isn’t a rebellion against elitism. It’s a tantrum against merit—a last-ditch effort by underqualified men to hold onto power by discrediting any system that might measure their actual abilities. They didn’t kill DEI because it was unfair. They killed it because it worked. And because they’re scared they’ll lose positions they were never qualified to have in the first place. Equity meant their résumés would finally be judged on merit. Inclusion meant they could be replaced by someone, god forbid a woman or person of color. Or at the very least, someone who doesn’t leave their venmo public, like our brilliant National Security Advisor just did.

The Trump Administration is home to a different kind of DEI: where White male mediocrity is rewarded and merit is gone.

[onlytiktoks]