I’ve been out most of the day and am just now catching up to the fallout from SignalGate. The best thing I’ve read so far is by Josh Marshall, SignalGate Is Bad; But OPSEC Isn’t Even the Worst Part Of It. Here’s just a bit of it.
Especially in the national security domain, many things the government does have to remain secret. Sometimes those things remain secret for years or decades. But they’re not secrets from the U.S. government. The U.S. government owns all those communications, all those facts of its own history. Using a Signal app like this is hiding what’s happening from the government itself. And that is almost certainly not an unintended byproduct but the very reason for the use. These are disappearing communications. They won’t be in the National Archives. Future administrations won’t know what happened. There also won’t be any records to determine whether crimes were committed.
This all goes to the fundamental point Trump has never been able to accept: that the U.S. government is the property of the American people and it persists over time with individual officeholders merely temporary occupants charged with administering an entity they don’t own or possess.
Think this is hyperbole? Remember that when Trump held his notorious meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2019 he confiscated his translator’s notes and ordered him not to divulge anything that had been discussed. Remember that Trump got impeached over an extortion plot recorded in the government record of his phone call with President Zelensky. An intelligence analyst discovered what had happened and decided he needed to report the conduct. These aren’t hypotheticals. They’ve already happened. And he’s even been caught. Which is probably one reason there’s so much use of Signal.
This is clearly routine in the Trump administration. How many of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders are happening on these apps? It’s the obvious place for bribes, various kinds of criminal conduct, asking foreign governments to do dirty jobs, maybe against American citizens, that Trump doesn’t dare try himself.
Do read the whole thing. See also Marcy Wheeler, Seven Reasons Trump’s Entire National Security Team Should Resign in Disgrace. And see Marina Hyde at The Guardian, It’s war and peace with Donald and Pete – and the worst group chat the world has ever seen. I think this story is going to be with us for a few days.
In other news, today Trump signed an executive order calling for changes to how U.S. elections are administered. Since the Constitution leaves the administration of elections to the states, I suspect many lawyers are already at work at the legal challenges. Says Democracy Docket, “Tuesday’s executive order is an extension of those efforts by attempting to make it more difficult for Americans to register to vote, to vastly increase federal supervision over state registration rolls and to punish states that do not comply with the order.”
Even more terrifying, apparently House Speaker Mike Johnson is considering “eliminating” federal courts that are causing particular trouble for Trump’s agenda.
More tomorrow.
I'm not confident the DOJ has the bench to deal with the court cases Trump is creating with Executive Orders. This is gonna be a problem when the DOJ lawyer isn't prepared (or can't be because the EO is totally out of bounds.) But like a lot of stuff, the question is whether the USSC will go along.
For the record, Jeffery Goldberg hosts Washington Week on Public Broadcasting. Unlike other shows, the round table discussion happens around a real round table. The guests are civil and quite knowledgeable, and Jeffery is quite the competent, capable, and mild-mannered moderator. Unlike other news shows it is relatively commercial free. Watching him work his wizard like moderator skills is nothing but awesome, and he is surrounded by top notch journalistic talent.
That he is viciously and falsely attacked by the SignalGate cabal is to be expected as it is the style of the cabal leader to attack the messenger. To his credit, Jefferey was the only one who respected the sensitive information and seemed to understand why it should be treated as secret, confidential, and damaging in the wrong circles. He would. He is a man of letters, the editor in chief of the Atlantic, a person of elite status in very exclusive world of which the cabal knows nothing. The cabal's lack of judgement regarding rude, derogatory, and grossly inappropriate statements with regard to European nations was quite revealing. To say the cabal lacks social skills and civility is unfortunately and an understatement. We will pay for this blunder for many years to come if we are lucky enough to gain anything close to redemption.
Yeah, it is funny that they tried to say JG "hacked" his way into the chat and that makes it ok that they are irresponsible for using insecure, hackable, 3rd-party software to subvert Federal Law. They keep circling back to incompetence. Then their "officials" lie to congress and that is ok with them, too, I guess, because congress is just the debating club arm of their propaganda operation.
Goldberg released the chat texts today. Seems to me that Hoghead definitely released condensed version of "war plans". He had all the launch times, types of weapons and strike times. Had the Houthis got hold of this we would have a bunch of dead F-18 pilots. I read the chats from Hoghead and they read like a spoiled rotten child with his new shiny toy (the defense department), he just wants to use all the acronyms and show off to the others how :dialed in" he is. Unfortunately this will not be his worse blunder, he is going to get a bunch of people killed before diaper don finally has to shit can him.
In the Atlantic piece on the leaked classified war plans, this is the telling line for me:
Shortly after[the attack times were leaked], Vice President J. D. Vance texted the group, “I will say a prayer for victory.”
WTF is his definition of "victory"? Spending a couple of billions of dollars on ordinance to huck at caves to show "strength" when the local tribes will filter back into the desert, pick up their weapons, and continue their shenanigans is victory? Vance was virtue signaling and just tooting his own horn. Seems to me that to pray for the safety of the pilots and asking God to protect the innocents would have been more appropriate. Instead, he was just praying to God to give him a prize. It just shows that this is all just a cosplay game to them (and as, uncledad notes, so they can use ALL the acronyms and seem sooooo official).
As a bonus, Vance shows his desire to betray our European Allies and his complete lack of understanding that the US Navy is key to protecting global trade routes so that, especially, US corporations can take advantage of the free flow of goods and America can have access to them. What a mendacious moron.