SignalGate scandal: Trump’s lies on national security lapse
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, left, joined by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, testifies as the House Intelligence Committee holds a hearing on worldwide threats, at the Capitol, in Washington, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard unfortunately was the first official under oath to talk about one of the biggest blunders in national security history.
And she appeared to be a worse liar than Donald Trump.
Gabbard was asked if she was in this high-level group chat discussing the Trump administrations’ secret war plans against the Iranian-back Houthis in Yemen. It was all on the commercial phone app, Signal.
Of, course she was. It was reported by the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg the day before.
She couldn’t just tell the truth to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Gabbard stumbled, denied the reality and when she came close to the truth, said nothing discussed was classified.
Details on weapons, war targets and timing? It was all in the chat very specifically.
Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth texted: “We are a GO for mission launch.”
And then came some remarkable details on the chat:
1215 et: F-18s launch (1st strike package).
1345: Trigger based F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME—also, Strike Drones Luanch (MQ-9s)”
All of this on a social media app. If the enemy had gotten this pre-strike information, American military personnel would have been killed.
And there’s more:
1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)
1415: Stirke Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITEYLY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based targets).”
1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts—also, first sea based Tomahawks launched”
MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)
“We are currently clean on OPSEC” this is operational security.
Godspeed to our Warriors.”
This is what was on the text chain.
And Tulsi said she didn’t know about it?
Under oath, Gabbard finally had to use the liar’s multi-purpose cover. She said she couldn’t recall any of it or if it was classified information. Occupational hazard of spies and liars. Bad memory.
And then she pointed the finger at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who she indicated may have declassified all that info in real time. Right.
And then like all good liars, the next day before the Senate side, she doubled down.
“No classified information was shared,” she insisted before the Senate. ”There were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared.”
By whose definition? An enemy had enough to go on in any of those messages in the group chat.
And then she said the Signal app was all pre-installed in government computers. The US government has spent billions in secure top secret communications systems. Using Signal is like picking up a convenient candy bar instead of sitting down to a prescribed gourmet healthy food option. Lazy.
Bottom line for the AANHPI in the loop? When Tulsi had her close up, she blew it. She could not tell the truth.
A real leader would have admitted mistakes were made, and commit to never letting it happen again.
Instead, we get another chat group member CIA director John Ratcliffe under oath saying no mistakes were made.
And we have Gabbard’s testimony.
She was underqualified to start, but now she proves she has no business being the nation’s director of intelligence.
She is right about one thing. If anyone needs to be blamed, it’s Hegseth.
Again, this is a big deal.
Do you have a loved one in the military? If they had acted like Hegseth, Gabbard et al, they’d be fired, imprisoned or both. In previous administrations, there’d be calls for a special prosecutor and a full investigation.
So please don’t roll your eyes when you hear more about the Trump administration’s group chat about secret war plans again on a phone app.
I’m still mad they invited a fly on the wall and didn’t invite me.
Consider that when Donald Trump feels compelled to defend his honor, he often goes back to the 2016 Hillary Clinton email story and her use of a private email server as a breach of national security.
Trump brought it up again a few weeks ago, in fact.
After this week, he won’t be able to kick Hillary anymore without appearing to be an even bigger hypocrite than he is.
National security matters. It’s the basis for everything Trump is doing. Going aggressively after innocent immigrants for deportation? National Security is his big cover, unless his cabinet is exposed to being careless and reckless over secret war plans.
Thanks to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg
So before you gladly accept Trump’s shrugging off the matter, let’s repeat.
The highest levels of the Trump administration has been caught discussing real US war plans on an encrypted, but not top secret, consumer app called Signal.
The top-level officials in the group chat included Trump’s unqualified cabinet hires, the former Fox weekend anchor now Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and the compromised former member of Congress now head of national intelligence, Gabbard.
Also included in the chat were Vice President JD Vance, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff (who was traveling in Russia), and Senior White House Advisor Stephen Miller (the man behind Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant policies).
They were discussing detailed plans to secretly bomb Iranian connected Houthi targets across Yemen.
Hegseth told reporters in Hawaii emphatically that no “war plans” were released.
But thankfully, because of perhaps the most egregious blunder, a journalist was included in the Signal chat.
Two hours before the bombing actually began, the war plan was sent out to that group chat. And no one noticed it included someone special.
The president? No, he was not included. And it wasn’t Vladimir Putin. That’s a joke, but my god, his spies were probably listening.
The special person was seen under the icon “JG,” as in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. A journalist was included in the discussion and got all the war plans – “precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing.” All of it delivered via text.
FILE – Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, smiles while participating in a Q&A session with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., in Washington, Sept. 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
A media person in a top-secret meeting? A huge mistake.
This is as crazy as it gets within the first 100 days of Trump.
A news guy included? Well, if a former weekend anchor of Fox can be secretary of defense…..
Goldberg revealed the colossal error this week in the first of two breaking stories in the Atlantic. But imagine what our allies are thinking? And then there is Beijing and Moscow, where the laughter must be loud about America’s unqualified amateurs running our democracy.
And Trump? He was asked about the story two hours after the first one broke on Monday.
“I don’t know anything about it,” is what Trump said. He wasn’t in on the group chat and didn’t know about the meeting that took place on the 15th.
Nine days after the group chat, Trump insisted he was clueless.
“I know nothing about it,” Trump said, choosing ignorance, a good look for him.
Apparently, the Trump administration’s push to cut for government efficiency includes eliminating briefing the president on little things like the questionable bombing of the Houthis in Yemen. An act of war? That would require Congress, and none of those guys were in on this either.
By Tuesday, Trump was insisting there was nothing there. And started blaming the Atlantic’s Goldberg, who is a reputable journalist.
But it set up Goldberg’s second story. If Trump and his top-level cabinet members on that Signal chat insist nothing was classified, then they should talk about it openly.
But they couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Because they were caught lying.
So Goldberg did the responsible thing. He followed up with a second story revealing enough detail to show that our government was lying to the American public.
It’s a matter of national security.
Sensitive government information shouldn’t be discussed on Signal. Period.
It’s reckless and unacceptable. It should be a bipartisan thing. But the Republicans continue to gaslight.
The White House line
The White House insists on the bottom line: “We killed the Houthis. Hooray.”
But they miss the point. They should be glad a reporter was inadvertently included. The Signal chat showed an inexcusable sloppiness that could have gotten American military personnel killed.
Hegseth added again on Wednesday that there were no war plans. Nothing was classified. But should it have been? The details are astonishing.
If China and Russia had this info, they would have learned so much about the carelessness of the Trump administration.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), and Raj Krishnamurti (D-IL) were among those calling for an investigation on Wednesday.
“It is completely outrageous to me that administrative officials come before us today with impunity, no acceptance of responsibility. Excuse after excuse after excuse, “ said Krishnamurti. “We send our men and women down range to do incredibly difficult, incredibly dangerous things. No one is willing to come to us and say, this was wrong. (Or that) this was a breach of security, and we won’t do it again.’
And then he got to the heads should roll part.
“It’s outrageous and it is a leadership failure and that’s why Sec. Hegseth, who undoubtedly transmitted classified sensitive operational information via this chain must resign immediately. There can be no fixes. There can be no corrections, until there is accountability.”
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reinforced Trump’s position that this is no big deal and then posed this question:
“Who would you trust? The Secretary of Defense or Jeffrey Goldberg?
Are you kidding? Hegseth, whose alcohol problem nearly kept him from the job, who has been accused of sexual assault, who has never held a top job qualifying him to be secretary of defense? I’d believe the top-level journalist, who after inadvertently being included in a group chain, acted like a patriot, and courageously told the American public what really happened.
When a journalist is eyewitness to the facts, the public should know whom to trust.
Not the politicians.
Remember Watergate. This is worse.
Gabbard and Hegseth, both born after Watergate in the ‘80s, should know better.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, news analyst and stage monologuist. He writes for the Inquirer.net’s US Channel. He has written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American issues since 1995. Find him on YouTube, patreon and substack.
