'Sheer lawlessness': Dem lawmaker says group chat reveals efforts to shield illegal acts
A Democratic lawmaker isn't buying excuses by Donald Trump's high-ranking national security officials for how a journalist ended up in their encrypted group chat to discuss war plans, and he said there's another element to the scandal that's been buried.
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reported that he was invited by national security adviser Mike Waltz into a Signal chat where defense secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed detailed plans for a bombing raid in Yemen that took place about two hours later, but Rep. Dave Min (D-CA) said those officials should not have been using the commercially available encrypted app to have those discussions.
"Look, I use Signal all the time, and I can answer the question here of how Jeffrey Goldberg was included," Min said. "It's because Hegseth and others put him on the chain. There's no breach here, there's no hack, and so I don't want to say anything that's already been said. I know people have talked about the incompetence of this administration across the board, the incompetence of having this person be part of this group, and that's what happens when you hire people based on a reality show set of criteria. The federal government is not a reality show."
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The congressman said the episode reveals the administration was breaking multiple laws regarding the preservation of government records.
"I'm a former law professor, I started my career prosecuting corporate fraud at the SEC, and what is egregious to me is this the sheer lawlessness of this administration across the board, whether it's shredding documents at USAID, whether it's Elon Musk illegally taking over our ID at Treasury and IRS, whether it's this episode," Min said. "Why were they on Signal in the first place? Why were they not on a secure federal channel?"
"The obvious answer here is that they were trying to avoid scrutiny, trying to avoid transparency, and trying to shirk and avoid federal law, including the Freedom of Information Act," Min added, pointing to the app's self-deleting feature. "My understanding is it was supposed to be one week disappearing. Why are they on this app which is not secure? Why is one of them in Russia? What information besides this is being shared right now over Signal on disappearing messages?"
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