Gabbard 'made big news' in opening statement before House Intel committee: legal expert

Appearing on MSNBC moments after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard made her opening statement before the House Intelligence Committee, national security lawyer Mark Zaid noted the Donald Trump appointee made an admission that deserves investigation.

Speaking with host Ana Cabrera, and after Gabbard also asserted she couldn't talk in-depth about the Signal chat revelations because of a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Zaid focused on Gabbard stating that the Signal app comes pre-installed on government devices.

"She just made big news from anything I've ever heard that the Signal app comes pre-installed on government devices," he told MSNBC host Ana Cabrera. "Yet at the same time as you referred earlier, the NSA had issued a warning about the vulnerabilities of the Signal app; whether it might be on the desktop computer or on a cell phone."

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"I mean, that is new because most of the time when I have my intelligence clients, they have been warned not to use encrypted apps, even on their personal devices, from an insider threat concern, because they look to their employees and go, 'Well, why would you need an encrypted app on your phone except to leak to journalists or leak to foreign nations?'" he pointed out.

'So you don't need to have conversations with your cousins on an encrypted app, so don't put it on your phone," he elaborated. "So that is something incredibly new. I know director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe yesterday had testified also that people had Signal on their desktop computers, and I immediately went out to my intel clients to ask, 'Is that true?' and everyone was incredulous about it, except until this morning, where apparently just recently they actually were putting it on their CIA computers."

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