Friday, March 28, 2025

But... But... It Is Against The Law!!!!

You all by now have heard about the flap over the classified material sent over the unclassified Signal platform... but everyone is missing the elephant in the room!
BBC News


Summary
  • Secretary of State Marco Rubio says "someone made a big mistake" inviting journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat with top US officials, but he says none of the messages put the lives of service members at risk
  • White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt criticises The Atlantic's editor Goldberg as an "anti-Trump hater", as the Trump administration reacts to the fallout of the scandal
  • She also repeats the Trump administration's position that there was no classified information in the leaked messages
  • Messages from the group chat newly published by The Atlantic appear to show Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing information about US air strikes on Yemen earlier this month
  • One message from Hegseth outlines timings for "when the first bombs will definitely drop". We explain three sensitive messages from the Signal chat here
  • Goldberg says he did not originally plan to publish the most sensitive messages from top US military and intelligence officials, but now wants the public to draw their own conclusions after the White House attempted to "downplay the significance" of the messages
That all misses the elephant!

Hint: The elephant is not the release of classified data.
Hint: The elephant is not that a reporter was invited into the room.

The elephant is: ‘Unlawful destruction of federal records’!


Members of President Donald Trump‘s cabinet violated federal law by using the encrypted Signal messaging app to discuss military actions in the Middle East, a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., alleges.

In a 16-page filing, nonprofit government transparency organization American Oversight alleges Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and various other Trump administration officials violated the Federal Records Act (FRA) during a multiple-day group chat about how to plan and “coordinate imminent U.S. military strikes in Yemen.”

The conversations in question occurred between March 11 and March 15, according to the lawsuit. The government’s use of the popular messaging app was first reported this week when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he was accidentally added to the group chat by national security adviser Michael Waltz.
Here is where the crime took place...
“According to the Atlantic Article, at least one participant in the Signal chat enabled the function that makes messages disappear after set time limits,” the lawsuit claims. “Defendant Waltz set at least some messages to disappear after one week, and at least some messages to disappear after four weeks.”
That is against the law!

Not only that but it seems like with the Trump the practice of using Signal is common! Fortune writes that,
One former government security leader, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told Fortune that all of the officials involved in the Signal group would have been required to preserve their communications under record laws.

The person added that none of the officials involved in the group chat had the authority to decide which of their communications did and didn’t apply to public record laws.

Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told The Atlantic: “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.”

The officials’ use of Signal has been criticized by other former officials, including former national security adviser under President Trump’s first administration, John Bolton.
Many of you know that I am on the Connecticut governor's advisory council and at the start of every meeting an announcement by Microsoft "Teams" says... "Recording in process." because of the FOI in Connecticut, but as usual Trump & Company ignores the laws!


Then the Trump administration does what it does best... lie.

The HuffPost writes...
John Ratcliffe, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that CIA officials loaded the Signal messaging program onto his work computer on his first day on the job and told him that it was a “permissible work use” for certain purposes. “That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration,” he said.

Former Biden officials, though, said that Signal was never permitted on their government phones.

“We were not allowed to have any messaging apps on our work phones,” said one former top national security official on the condition of anonymity. “And under no circumstances were unclassified messaging apps allowed to be used for transmission of classified material. This is misdirection at its worst.”
Just make things up! Lie, blame the other guy... but you know what people are being to see through that smoke screen. But the thing is even if Signal was used during the Biden administration why did they continue using it illegally? Two wrongs do not make a right.
“Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ feature to spy on encrypted conversations,” stated the advisory obtained by HuffPost titled “Signal Vulnerability.”

The document, which CBS also reported on Tuesday, explicitly states that “third-party messaging apps” like Signal “are NOT approved to process or store nonpublic unclassified information.”

That language suggests that the ban on using Signal on government mobile devices that existed during the Biden administration remained in effect at the time of the last month’s advisory — suggesting that the entire group chat that included Ratcliffe, Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, top White House aide Stephen Miller and a dozen others — was conducted over their personal cell phones.
This whole things sounds like something out of a Keystone Comedy movie. They didn't even think about using non-government phones, it was just second nature to them, and I have to wonder what else did they use their phones for?


Then we have Trump pour gas on a fire...
An interview with national security lawyer Bradley Moss, who explains why the stunning exposure of highly sensitive war-planning texts might have been unlawful—and reveals Trump as a disastrously failed leader.
The New Republic
By Greg Sargent
March 25, 2025


By now you may have heard that President Trump’s most senior officials discussed war plans on Signal, and that the group chat actually included Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Goldberg published his findings, and it caused an explosion in Washington with many Democrats calling for an investigation and even the occasional Republican slamming this as an unacceptable security breach. President Trump was asked about this, and shockingly he claimed not to know anything about it. What struck us though is what Trump didn’t say. He failed to say that he’s going to get to the bottom of this mess and that it should have never happened. Today, we’re trying to dig through all this with the perfect guest, veteran national security lawyer Bradley Moss. Brad, thanks for coming on, man.
He was probably out playing golf!

 [...]

Sargent: That brings me to the next point here: what Donald Trump had to say about this. He was asked about it, and here’s what happened.

Reporter (audio voiceover): Your reaction to the story from The Atlantic that said that some of your top Cabinet officials and aides had been discussing very sensitive material through Signal and they included in an Atlantic reporter for that? What is your response to that?

Donald Trump (audio voiceover): 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 that they had what?

Reporter (audio voiceover): They were using Signal to coordinate on sensitive materials

Trump (audio voiceover): Having to do with what? Having to do with what? What were they talking about?

Reporter (audio voiceover): —with the Houthis.

Trump (audio voiceover): The Houthis, you mean the attack on the Houthis?

Reporter (audio voiceover): That’s correct.

Trump (audio voiceover): 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.
Then the article goes on to discuss the legalities of using Signal and discussing classified material and Trump has no idea what they are talking about... he is in the dark.
Sargent: Let’s go back to what you brought up earlier, which is the legality of this. It seems like it’s cause for serious investigation. It looks as if Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, coordinated this communication, so it’s possible some laws were violated, right? Can you walk us through that?

Moss: Sure. This would almost certainly violate the Espionage Act in that they were placing classified information or, more broadly, national defense information into an unauthorized location, namely the Signal chat, which is not authorized to contain classified discussions. They were disseminating it to other individuals. It’s questionable whether or not everybody in that chat had the requisite need to know; but putting that aside, they’re disseminating it to Jeffrey Goldberg. For whatever reason that these various individuals put him on, that is in and of itself a violation of the Espionage Act and a couple different statutory provisions that don’t even require willful intent but simply have to do with you gave it to an unauthorized third party.

In any other world, in any other time in D.C. politics and governance, this would be a cause for immediate congressional investigations. It would be cause for immediate internal inquiries to determine why this was allowed to happen, to what extent this is a larger problem, and to what extent people involved on these chats cross the line into civil or criminal liability. In the world of Donald Trump and his presidency, it is unlikely that any of that will happen unless and until the Democratic Party finds a way to gather itself together and win the midterms to at least have some oversight authority. I have no reason to believe it’ll happen for the next two years though.
It more and more seems like Trump is just the "front person" and has no idea what's happening.

It has taken a British media to push the question that is not being asked, of the elephant in the room.
Joseph Gedeon and Hugo Lowell in Washington
High-ranking officials can spill military secrets with apparent near-total immunity and no accountability
The Guardian
March 27, 2025


The problem with the now infamous Signal chat read around the world is not just that sensitive military-operations details were broadcast, but that this reveals a pattern of what appears to be institutional dishonesty inside the Trump administration and the legal ramifications that presents.

The leak exposes a system of broken accountability, where high-ranking officials can spill military secrets with apparent near-total immunity. Despite potential violations of classification protocols, federal record-keeping laws and promises of operational security, the leaders look to face no meaningful legal consequences.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have doubled down on the administration’s position that none of the messages in the Signal chat were classified, claiming they amounted to a “team update” that did not name intelligence-collection sources or methods.
Right now they are in "Circle the wagons" mode. The "Rally around the flag" mode or in this case "Rally around cult leader for he can do no wrong!"
A former White House official said that while many in the government use Signal for convenience, this incident can only be summed up as “complete amateur hour”, and that Hegseth’s over-sharing would have resulted in immediate security-clearance revocation in previous administrations.
A three ring circus is more like it!
More than a dozen top-level Trump administration leaders use a Signal group chat, rather than secure government communication channels that they are all well aware of, which raises additional questions about information handling.
Just a reminder... Trump fired the Department of Defense inspector general! And Congress doesn't have any backbone like they did in the Nixon era.
The immediate legal consequence is likely to come in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday that accuses Hegseth; the CIA director, John Ratcliffe; the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and others of flouting federal records retention laws.

In the 18-page suit, the watchdog group American Oversight asks a federal judge to compel the Trump administration to preserve the messages in the Signal chat, arguing that the use of a function that automatically deleted the messages after a certain time was unlawful.
It should be interesting to see what Trump has to say about these judges!


Update: 3/30 @ 2AM

The fallout continues!
How did The Alantic magazine's editor wind up in a group chat where officials discussed imminent airstrikes? The Trump team's explanations clash.
By Erin Mansfield
USA TODAY
March 29, 2025


To Donald Trump, the SignalGate disclosure was a mistake. The CIA director said his involvement was legal, while the director of national intelligence appeared to dodge a senator's questions about it. And the defense secretary forcefully denied sharing classified airstrike plans in a group chat − and attacked the journalist who received them.

As members of the Trump administration scrambled to answer questions this week about how, why and what they discussed on a group chat that included The Atlantic magazine's top editor, they sent different messages about who was responsible − even as the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee called for an independent investigation.

“It's difficult to tell whether this is a coordinated effort to confuse the situation or if the level of incompetence and disregard for security is so steep that they really don't know who is at fault for this mess," said Kurt Braddock, a public communication professor at American University. "It could very well be both.”
When you appoint idiots to cabinet heads you are going to get incompetent people who have no business experience you are going to get these "F**k-ups."
“It would be fair to characterize that kind of information as operationally sensitive information that should not be released outside of government channels until the operation is concluded,” said Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who has other criticisms of Goldberg's story.
If it wasn't so serious it would almost be comical the way Trump's circus is running around in circles! But everything is going to be okay because they called in the Ace Fixer Upper... Musk!
Waltz said he was working with tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk and “the best technical minds looking at how this happened." He suggested Goldberg’s number was in his contacts under another person’s name.
But of course the Republicans do what come natural to them... lie! 
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, whom The Atlantic reported was in the chat, told a Senate panel Tuesday his contributions were “entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”
They keep digging the deeper and deeper,
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters he was on the Signal chat in order to update members of Congress and foreign allies, and that his contributions were minimal.

“Obviously someone made a mistake,” Rubio said.
And let's not forget Mr. Secretary that the use of the Signal App is illegal for government employees! It violates the Federal Records Act! So you have wonder... what are they hiding from the public?

***
Writing for The New York Times, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton railed against the “latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds” caused by President Donald Trump’s administration this week, after The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed he’d been added to a group Signal chat discussing plans to strike Yemen.

Clinton’s reaction is notable because, about a decade ago, some of the same Republicans now playing down the Signal scandal relentlessly accused her of mishandling classified information as secretary of state because she had used a private email server to send official messages.
Of course the Republicans don't think that they've done anything wrong! In another HuffPost article...
President Donald Trump is making his clearest commitment to not fire anyone over an embarrassing accidental leak of his administration’s plans for an airstrike against the Houthis in Yemen.
But don't forget that the Republicans issued over 70 subpoenas and letters investigating Clinton's emails... but zero for Signal Gate!

So stay tune for the latest in the Signal gate saga.

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