Hypocrisy Abounds

Pro-democracy journalists have been having a field day with what is now being called Signalgate.

Here are a few snippets of commentary from various sources.

Signalgate is being compared to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal which went on for over a year with front page headlines in corporate, as well as rightwing, media, and was a large factor in putting Trump in the White House the first time. Fox and other right wing media are treating this scandal, which is far worse for national security, as a simple mistake and are castigating the “Lefties” for making a big deal of it.

Jill Filipovic dug up Attorney General Pam Bondi’s response to Hillarie’s email scandal. Bondi, then the attorney general of Florida, said at the 2016 GOP convention that Hillarie “believes the law doesn’t apply to her”. As the crowd broke into their chant she said “Lock her up. I love that”.

Yesterday Bondi said it is unlikely there will be any charges laid in the Signal case. Apparently Bondi believes that the law doesn’t apply to her fellow Trump appointees.

The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called the story "another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin".

Donald Trump called it a "witch hunt", his favorite term for any attempt to hold him accountable for any of his many crimes.

Several good quotes came from Heather Cox Richardson’s substack this morning.

Hegseth: “Nobody was texting war plans”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (after first denying that she was even in the group chat: “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

In response to these accusations the Atlantic published the entire transcript of the group chat, redacting out only the name of a CIA agent which Hegseth had recklessly included in his text. Anyone reading it can be left in no doubt that the information being shared is highly sensitive and if it wasn't classified, it should have been.

Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Army pilot who was nearly killed in Iraq is furious. She wrote: “Pete Hegseth is a f’ing liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately.”

Missing from the group chat was President Trump [too busy announcing new tariffs or an election executive order disenfranchising millions of American citizens?]. Also left out was the acting chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Christopher Grady. Trump fired the previous chair, Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr. in February and hasn’t replaced him yet. You would expect Grady, the currently highest ranking Pentagon officer, would be included in a decision about a military strike.

Pete Hesgeth publicly suggested that Brown had been appointed because he is Black: “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt.” [Well, Pete, there is no doubt why you were appointed, and it wasn’t for your skill, knowledge, or combat experience. Nor for your drinking problem or sexual assault allegations (although apparently these weren't disqualifying). No, it was for your total loyalty to Donald (as well as the color of your skin).]

A former White House official said that if he had done what the people in that chat group did, he would have been investigated and lost his security clearance. Come to think of it most of the people in that chat never were investigated by the FBI for security clearance – Trump just waved his magic Sharpie or something and declared them eligible. Gabbard and Hegseth would likely not have passed - Gabbard for her Russian sympathies and Hegseth for the sexual assault allegations.

Discussions of military strikes are supposed to be held in a secure room called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or SCIF, with computers which are not connected to the internet. People invited to the meeting leave their laptops, phones, watches, pens and paper outside the door. Such discussions are not intended to be held in group chats and certainly not on a civilian app like Signal.

Noah Schactman wrote in a March 26 NYT article: 

"... this is an administration that actively, proudly rejects expertise. It casts those who have it as the corrupt old guard, the real enemy, the “deep state,” and it touts its own refusal to heed them as proof of its legitimacy and righteousness. By that view, the security establishment must be bent to the White House’s will, and if the people at the top don’t have the traditional qualifications for their positions, all the better. This is an administration that makes a weekend Fox News host the leader of the world’s largest military, puts a conspiracy-minded podcaster in charge of the F.B.I., and has at its pinnacle a reality star turned president. Blunders like this are an inevitable consequence."

WJ Hennigan wrote in NYT March 26

In previous administrations, this matter would have been investigated by the Defense Department’s inspector general, but Trump fired him during the first week of his second term.

Jen Rubin for the Contrarian interviewed Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and a House Representative for New Jersey where she sits on the House Armed Services Committee. In response to Jen's question about the Signal security issue Sherrill said "...every single thing about this just points to complete incompetence, incredible national security violations and dangers".

Commenting on the possibility that one of the people in the group chat was in Moscow, possibly right in the Kremlin, she said " I don't travel with my personal phones, I always have a burner phone. Having travelled to Moscow years ago I can tell you that the OPSEC (operations security) required to go there is very, very high. To think that somebody is texting there on a Signal chat with our nation's secrets is shocking."  

Regarding America's allies Sherrill said that "Nobody is going to be sharing intelligence with us ... the U.S. is an unreliable ally. This administration is just making us weaker with this incompetence."

Someone said that no one will be fired or charged unless Trump decides to, and he will only do that if it starts to affect him personally.

In an ironic twist of fate, a lawsuit to force the Trump administration to preserve the messages in the Signal chat according to government records laws, was randomly assigned to Judge James Boasberg. Yes the same judge who was denied the flight times of the Venezuelan deportations because of “national security”. I expect the DOJ will now try to argue that the planning of the Houthi strikes were not classified and thus did not merit full security measures.

Hypocrisy abounds!

Sources:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-26-2025

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/27/the-atlantic-handled-signalgate-with-good-judgment

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/opinion/americas-security-blunder-is-the-gift-of-a-lifetime.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/opinion/signal-group-chat-hypocrisy.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/27/signal-chat-leak-pete-hegseth

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/opinion/waltz-hegseth-signal-group-chat.html

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/rep-mikie-sherrill-and-jen-rubin