JD Vance, the writer of the memoir turned to the vice president, thought the air attacks were against Houthis in Yemen’s “mistake”. Pette Hegsetth, host Fox News, was launched by the Defense Minister, he performed the case for the action. “I think we should go,” he said.
Both expressed their contempt for US allies in Europe as fervently as privately as the administration of Donald Trump in the public. “I just hate the re -ejecting Europe,” Vance said.
Such exchanges among the top cabinet and national security officers usually take place in a room for the situation in a white house or other very safe communication lines.
But this one between more than a dozen best officials ahead of this month’s US military operation against the Iranian group of militia supported on a Signal chat This is shared with Jeffrey Goldberg, an older editor in Atlantic magazine.
The electronic discussion published on Monday, which was confirmed by the White House as authentic, was shaken by Trump’s Washington within minutes.
Signal Chat – called “Houthi PC Mala Group” – represented one of the most bright violations of national security in recent American history, although it is unclear whether it is ever explored by the Federal Agency for Laws, including the Ministry of Justice and the FBI, that Trump has tried to bear under his thumb.
The impression refused to comment on the violation. The FBI sent all the questions to Pentagon, who did not answer the comment request.
He also pointed out to what extent the vance is positioned in the inner foreign policy Discussions as the most interesting isolationist, to the point of private separation with Trump’s first major military strike.
And he definitely showed the depth of misconceptions about Europe in the heads of top Trump officials at a time when the NATO value raised in the launch of a transatlantic trade war.
One of the main reservations of Houthhis’s impact officials was that it would allow the European economy to release US forces to clean the Red Sea shipping strips. “I fully share your abomination of European free load, it’s pathetic,” Hegsetth he said in response to Vance.
Trump’s only comment on the exchange was to say that he did not know “nothing” about the violation, and there was no indication that anyone would be responsible.
But the Democrats quickly called for resignation, appointing Hegsetth, as well as Mike Waltz, national security adviser who accidentally invited a journalist to Chat, or Tulsi Gabbard, director of the National Intelligence Service, who refused to “have been” unauthorized by publishing classified information like that “.
“The heads have to roll. This is one of the dumbest security violations in history, suggesting a greater pattern of potentially criminal behavior that brings Americans to risk,” Don Beyer, a democratic Congressman from Virginia, on X.
Some legal experts agreed that the discussion and detection of sensitive military plans were potentially illegal.
“If this information about the national defense is consciously transferred through the media that is not sure, it could be a violation of the” SPIJAPA LAW of 1917, said Deborah Curtis, a partner at Arnold & Porter.
“The signal is a private encryption end to the end [messaging service]”She added.” It is not a medium that approved the US government such a conversation. . . Particularly given that you do not necessarily know who is on [other] end of the app. “
Michael O’Henlon, director of foreign policy research in Think-Tank Brookings Institution, said the episode discovered “extraordinary weakness” among senior officials who “needed to know better”.
“You had a majority of top -notch national security teams, if not almost all, the ace for this chain of communication, and none of them had wisdom to turn it off. At the very least, everyone should go to the forests. And if they do not apologize, then it somehow talks about the casualness and cavity that scares me.”
Republicans at Capitol Hill tried to reduce the incident, suggesting that it was nothing but a lesson to learn for the future and that the debate itself was healthy.
“They will follow it and ensure that it is not happening again,” said Mike Johnson, a home speaker.
He added, “I think you saw, they were officials of top levels doing their job, doing it and doing a plan with precision.”
“It sounds like a huge sequin,” said John Cornyn, a Texas senator, for another group of journalists, sounding a little more disturbed. “It sounds like someone dropped the ball.”
Trump’s critics, discomfort in discussing classified information will not be a surprise, given that the President was prosecuted for allegedly misunderstooding sensitive documents on national security stored in Mar-a-lag after his first term in the federal case, which was rejected after his victory 2024.
Despite this, chat signals on Monday launched a new circle of anger that Trump and his team will hardly decrease.
“What this incident reflects is an unimaginable recklessness and inattentions when it comes to national security information,” said Emily Bersman, a professor at the Law Center of the University of Houston.
“This is not more likely that the president’s national security team and the VP will be massively prosecuted,” she added.
