The Crimes And The Coverup
The Signal story revealed just how incompetent the Trump administration is, and how far they are willing to go to cover up their crimes.
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – I’m so torn. On one hand, I’m infuriated by the utter disregard for national security and the obvious effort to destroy official records by Donald Trump’s senior most officials. On the other hand, I’m encouraged by the fact that they were caught red-handed – and by a journalist who was unafraid to publish his findings, no less.
The Signal ordeal, in which the vice president, the defense secretary, the national security adviser, and many other senior officials discussed plans for a bombing attack in Yemen on an unsecured consumer app, is the latest example of the rank incompetence, negligence, and recklessness of Donald’s authoritarian regime.
What makes this story especially egregious is that it’s not just about Pete Hegseth posting a minute-by-minute rundown of how the attack would take place – hours before it happened. It’s not just about Mike Waltz, Donald’s national security adviser, accidentally adding The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the highly sensitive group chat. It’s also about typically nefarious administration officials using an app that deletes messages after a set period of time, making the conversations impossible to retain per the Presidential Records Act.
It’s about the crimes and the coverup.
Given how there are secured devices used by senior officials for such purposes, and which are easily accessible by these nincompoops, they instead chose to blab about the attack on Signal, an app which Russian hackers, in particular, have successfully breached. And these officials ostensibly knew about the Russian angle because they were apparently told about it.
[A]ccording to a Pentagon “OPSEC special bulletin” seen by NPR reporters and sent on 18 March, Russian hacking groups may exploit the vulnerability in Signal to spy on encrypted organizations, potentially targeting “persons of interest”.
It’s almost as if they wanted the Russians to know what they were up to. But I tend to believe it was motivated by a preemptive cover-up, and Signal is a perfect tool for that illegal endeavor. While, yes, they discussed classified information that isn’t supposed to be public, there’s also a legal obligation to preserve records like this. Put another way: they were so interested in making sure their chat would get deleted after-the-fact, they perhaps knowingly exposed military secrets to hostile foreign actors.
And it’s not the first time. Waltz referenced a previous chat in the screengrabs posted by The Atlantic. What else was stupidly revealed in the previous chats? How many group chats have there been? Were non-administration users inadvertently added to those chats, too? Were their personal devices lost or compromised? Journalists could submit FOIA requests to read the transcripts, but it’s likely the chats have likely been intentionally deleted, thanks to the use of Signal.
One of my favorite hamfisted excuses from the administration came from Mike Waltz on Laura Ingraham’s show where he hinted that maybe Goldberg somehow infiltrated the chat on his own, only for this flimsy bullshit narrative to be exposed the next day when The Atlantic published the complete set of screengrabs, including one which clearly shows the message: “Michael Waltz added you [Goldberg] to the group.” Point being, these are sinister characters who are motivated to lie to their own Fox News fanboys (the rest of us, too), so much so that they’re willing to endanger the safety of our military and intelligence personnel.
Making matters even worse, if that’s possible, new reporting from Der Spiegel reveals that: “the contact data of some of those officials, including mobile phone numbers, is freely accessible on the internet.”
Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. [...] DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.
Whoops!
Maybe sidestepping background checks and security clearances for Donald’s coterie of weirdos and Fox News morning zoo co-hosts was a huge blunder. In normal times, a fiasco of this magnitude would’ve ended careers.
One last thing: it’s vitally important that we don’t let this story fade away into the noise. It’s easy to allow such a thing to happen given Donald’s obvious flood-the-zone strategy. But imagine for a second what the Republicans would do if this had been the Biden or Obama administration. Imagine the endless freakout. Imagine the relentless investigations. We have to press our elected leaders to keep up the pressure, and we need to support journalists who are fearlessly exposing the incompetence of his despotic regime. Don’t let up. Don’t ignore the details. Keep spreading the word.
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My wife has read the entire Project 2025 document and reports that one of its suggestions is to use apps like Signal to get around reporting and retention requirements. One can only conclude that the use of Signal was entirely deliberate.
In this case, it probably isn't a real issue whether hackers from enemy interests have been, or could be hacking Signal chats. The public record indicates that it is quite likely that one or more of the administration's participants in the chat would be sharing that information with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orbán, or other adversaries anyway.
These folks have no allegiance to America or to the Constitution.