President Donald Trump and his team have endangered the troops with the Signalgate breach, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) told CNN's Kasie Hunt on Friday — and anyone else who similarly leaked national defense information to a reporter in an unsecured group chat would face criminal prosecution.
"Let me start there with what [Attorney General] Pam Bondi said," Hunt asked him. "She seems to think that Signal cannot be hacked. Your response?"
"It's delusional. It's devoid of all reality," said Ryan. "I was an Army intelligence officer, 27 months in combat. That's just factually incorrect. And I would hope she'd go get a briefing from a host of different national security agencies, including the NSA, that would tell her differently than that."
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"If one of your commanders or somebody above you was communicating this way about the things that you were doing in the field, how would you have felt about that?" Hunt pressed him.
"Betrayed," said Ryan. "I think this is another betrayal, honestly by this administration, both in what it did, but then in just flat-out — rather than taking accountability, they're flat-out not even covering it up, but just lying directly to the American people, saying Signal is secure, saying there weren't sources and methods, saying there wasn't classified information, all verifiably, demonstrabably false things for an administration that claimed to run on competence and strength, and that has nowbeen eviscerated this week in a way that I think is going have lasting, and should have lasting, political and really moral effects with our allies."
"If I had disclosed that kind of sensitive operational information, regardless of the means, I would lose my clearance, I would be punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and I would potentially go to jail," he added. "And why should the Secretary of Defense or any other senior leader not be held to the same standard?"
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