The other day, I was thinking about the mid-air crash of a commercial plane and a military helicopter over the Potomac back in January. Donald Trump blamed the crash on Joe Biden and DEI and… it worked. Everyone moved on. I haven’t heard or seen anything about accountability for the crash (or any of the other plane crashes and airport catastrophes) in many weeks. The media simply doesn’t want to hold Republicans accountable for their many deadly f–kups or massive security breaches. Speaking of, the Trump administration accidentally added The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to their Signal groupchat where they shared their highly sensitive and blundering plans to wage war around the world. You can read The Atlantic’s piece (written by Goldberg) here.

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. This is going to require some explaining.

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After receiving the Waltz text related to the “Houthi PC small group,” I consulted a number of colleagues. We discussed the possibility that these texts were part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization, the sort of group that attempts to place journalists in embarrassing positions, and sometimes succeeds. I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.

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At this point, a fascinating policy discussion commenced. The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. 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.”

[From The Atlantic]

Basically, Goldberg was accidentally added to the highly encrypted Signal group chat and none of the high-level bureaucrats and national security experts noticed that the Atlantic’s EIC was silently monitoring their comms for several days. Goldberg then left the Signal group when he was finally convinced that the whole thing was real and the group was actually shooting the sh-t about war plans and military-messaging after adding him to the chat. Goldberg still doesn’t know if anyone realized that he was added to the group at the time, but he sent questions to the people in the group, and in those questions, he told them that they had added him to the chat.

This is an extremely high-level security breach, and it was likely done by Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Goldberg spoke to several lawyers who said that Waltz “may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information.” All of the lawyers consulted said, flatly, that the Signal groupchat should not have been established in the first place about an active military operation or the planning of an upcoming op. Goldberg also writes: “The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information. The government has its own systems for that purpose. If officials want to discuss military activity, they should go into a specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF—most Cabinet-level national-security officials have one installed in their home—or communicate only on approved government equipment, the lawyers said.” BUT HER EMAILS, amirite?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.