In the wake of a series of firings of senior Pentagon officials, quickly followed by a second Signal scandal involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a CNN guest and former congresswoman warned Monday how dangerous the revelations are for the United States.
Host Kate Bolduan asked the Democrat, “Just from your perspective, what does it do when a secretary's longtime advisor, his deputy chief of staff, the chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense, they all get pushed out of the Pentagon in the midst of all of this?”
“Well, I recently chaired the commission on national defense strategy. We said unanimously for Democrats, for Republicans, that this is the most dangerous time in terms of national security since 1945,” former Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) responded.
“If I were any one of America's enemies, looking at our country, I would think this is my opportunity to do any number of things, think a massive cyber attack in the U.S. I worry a lot that we could have a cyber 9/11 any day,” Harman said.
The former Representative then pointed to several women in the military who could take Hegseth’s place, before talking about how our enemies could take advantage of his Signal scandals.
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“And so if I'm China, Russia, anywhere, I think I've got open season on the U.S. and look at what Russia is doing in Ukraine.”
She added, “Russia is toying with the United States and obviously toying with Ukraine, and it is an absolute tragedy to see a place which was invaded in violation of international law after Russia promised repeatedly to respect its sovereignty, suffering this way. Ukraine is still fighting back.”
“Europe is going to step up and fight for Ukraine. But now that we have a casual comment from, I think it's our vice president, that we may not continue to pay attention to Ukraine, I think that is hugely damaging and really threatens U.S. national security,” Harman said.
In the latest scandal, Hegesth leaked Military information in a Signal chat, which included his wife and brother. It came just a few weeks after the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was mistakenly added to a similar chat. Both instances were about operations in Yemen.
Watch the video below or at this link.