This unfortunate reality reveals a troubling pattern of violation of both operational security and federal records retention laws. The national Defense secretary and infamous Trump-stenographer Pete Hegseth is at the heart of the dispute, having sent out the alert before the military raid was carried out. The full update was posted, however, in a seemingly insecure Signal chat group, which included personal information. This seems to raise very legitimate operational security concerns.
Sincerity on SLICH Hegseth’s message was clearly “clean on OPSEC”—and he was absolutely right to highlight the sensitivity of the information discussed. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, accuses Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Scott Bessent, and others of violating federal records retention laws. Chief US district judge James Boasberg, in Washington DC, has personally overseen the legal proceedings. He would do well to scrutinize how officials have changed their tune on what constitutes classified materials.
As Brian Finucane, former state department attorney and policy advisor noted, this is no mere formality. He pointed out the specificity with which we reported on the types of aircraft shows that it was probably classified. That’s exactly how Republican Rep. Mike Waltz conceived of the chat group and initially invited members to join. Now, he’s looking to rehabilitate his image after the incident. Waltz stated that he had “never met, don’t know, never communicated with” Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor-in-chief.
“first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” – Mike Waltz.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and Pete Hegseth have maintained that none of the messages in the Signal chat were classified. While we question this legal position, there seems to be no short-term criminal liability for the officials under the Espionage Act. We can all count on one hand the number of cabinet officials the Trump justice department is likely to prosecute for willful misconduct.
US Department of Defense classification policies prohibit such practice. These instructions suggest that such elaborate military battle plans typically warrant a classification of at least “secret.” Some of these real-time situational updates shared in the chat even graduated to the TWEET CLASSIFIED level. Waltz gave a real time update from the chat. His message inadvertently exposed US capabilities and assets in the region.
The administration’s broad attack in a different deportations case presents hurdles. It will have to proceed with this new lawsuit over the Signal chat very prudently. Boasberg, who has repeatedly challenged the federal government’s shifting justifications for classifying documents, could ask difficult, if not impossible, questions in court.
“It’s not clear what decision Trump actually made. We don’t know what Trump authorized.” – Brian Finucane.
Beyond these legal implications, security clearance practices are cause for alarm. One former White House official vented on this blog about the double standard he saw at play over security clearances.
“I would have lost my clearance,” the official said. “I mean, these guys won’t lose their clearances because no one fucking cares about anything anymore, but if I would have done this, I would have been investigated, and I would have lost my clearance.”
What’s already unfolded raises serious questions about government transparency and accountability. As the lawsuit continues, it will shed more light on how top-level federal government handles sensitive information. Secondly, it will look at whether existing national security protocols sufficiently protect U.S. national security interests.