Hegseth Sends Top Secret Attack Plans to Journalist - By Mistake

As a reminder, Tulsi Gabbard thought the misuse of messaging apps was an offense that deserves firing...exactly one month ago.

Tulsi Gabbard fires more than 100 intelligence officers over messages in a chat tool

 

What's the opposite of walking it back?

 

Goldberg to Trump...

 

How long before Trump claims he’s never met any of his cabinet and they are just low level staffers and coffee boys.

 

Can the DOJ charge the Atlantic for publishing something the administration said was no big deal?

 

Hard to expose a political lie more clearly than this. We’ll see if the admin has the nerve to triple down.

 

I would add that the article is dated yesterday before Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic released the transcript of the conversation was released.

 

Next line of attack will be "if Goldberg thought this information was classified then why did he save screenshots on an unsecure computer?" Then calls to prosecute to Goldberg.

 

Waltz gets sacked and this fades away until the next outrageously stupid thing.

 

Good point. I would argue that once the press is invited to participate, even if by mistake, it is not possible to call it classified. Second, the Atlantic and its lawyers said (paraphrasing) it was a suspected phishing scheme and might have wanted to retain evidence. If so, a reasonable person would say he did nothing wrong by retaining evidence for a civil matter or if needed to be turned over to the DOJ or state for criminal charges against a phishing scammer.

 

Can any legal scholars here speak the consitutionality question this situation brings up?

Everyone is focused on the security aspect and the pooping on our allies aspect, but there seems to be a third aspect to this as well?

Vance: "I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc,"

Hegs: "messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) [former President Joe] Biden failed & 2) Iran funded." He conceded that "a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus," but predicted two "immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first – or Gaza cease fire falls apart – and we don't get to start this on our own terms." Hegseth added that "we can easily pause" the war later on.

I know this isn't a new concept or anything, but this is the just the Executive branch waging war willy nilly - based upon political reasoning, not national security. I have to dust off my 8th grade civics test, but I think Congress is supposed to get a say here.

 

Why lie about this? They played chicken and lost. This is fireable stuff.

“The new messages made public by the magazine showed the texts included details about the specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack and mentions intelligence that an unnamed target of the attacks was at a “known location.”


https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/atlantic-signal-chat-attack-details-829f6e33?st=jAaSKX&reflink=article_copyURL_share

 

Didn’t he already say he “didn’t know anything about it”? That’s pretty much his standard line. Ironically, this is probably one of the few times he told the truth - as it’s quite likely he was totally unaware of any details about the operation (and perhaps no President gets into the weeds on an operation against the Houthi’s, as it’s just sort of a thing we do now).

Oh I 100% expect this. They even said “it’s not classified”. But in reality of course it is/was. Pretty ballsy of the journalist knowing both this AND that these degenerate bozos will try to come after him despite them already straight up lying as to both what happened and it’s classification (you can be already see the attack dogs in right wing media).

 

100%. VP is flat out saying economy and “wag the dog” analysis.

BTW…Which Congress? The one that is not doing anything right now? Mid terms can’t come soon enough.

 

What do you think they are talking about here? War with Iran???

Haven’t we done strikes on the Houthi’s for years now? I don’t think that constitutes war, and the public has shown they basically don’t give a crap about that stuff. So if they were concerned with blowback over striking the Houthi’s that seems weird, but if they are talking about Iran that is something else entirely.

 

Hard to say for sure, but regardless - it seems, I dunno, disgusting to hear war plans being weighed so openly against domestic politics. All without (continued) Congressional approval.

At what point do we, as a nation, come to realize we've gone way too far with Executive power?

 

Rules for thee, not for me.