It took two months, but we finally have our first “gate” of the second Trump administration: “Signalgate” — and it’s a doozy. You are no doubt aware by now that The Atlantic has published an article reporting that the top national security officials known as the “Principlas Committee” were gathered together in a Signal group chat to discuss the impending bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and accidentally included the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in the chat without realizing it.
In the chat, they discussed policy concerns about the campaign, slagged the European allies, shared what experts say are by definition classified battle plans, which included “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing” and even mentioned the name of a covert CIA officer. Goldberg published an article about it on Monday, complete with screenshots of the chat, although he did not publish the classified information or the name of the CIA officer. On Wednesday, the Atlantic published more from the group chat:
That these high-level national security officials were all using a commercial app on personal phones that could easily be breached by state-level actors is bad enough. (One of the members on the call, special envoy Steve Witkoff, was actually in Moscow at the time.) But considering their previous outrage at Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server, you would have thought that it would have crossed the mind of at least one of them that this was dangerous. There is no other way to interpret any of that except to assume that they commonly use Signal for such discussions in contravention of every security protocol in the U.S. government.
When you think about it, though, why wouldn’t they? Their leader stubbornly refused to give up his own personal phone and made a fetish of blabbing national security secrets since his first term. Recall that right after he fired FBI Director James Comey, he had the Russian foreign minister and ambassador over to the Oval Office for a chat where he shared some very closely held classified information (which later turned out to be about Israel). After he was out of office, he stole boxes full of classified documents, stored them in his toilet and refused to give them back. He was indicted for that but the Justice Department dropped the charges when he won the election.
And when it comes to war plans, Trump certainly has no problem sharing them with reporters. After all, he was also indicted for showing stolen Pentagon plans for war with Iran to two reporters down at Mar-a-Lago. That’s not just hearsay. It’s on tape. He also blabbed highly confidential information about nuclear submarines to a member of his club, an Australian billionaire who, according to ABC News, “then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists…”
The most chilling revelation to come out of all this may be that Stephen Miller is the person everyone turns to to explain what it is Trump really wants.