[joshuamerrill]

Because I don't know whether either of those are appropriate.

There aren't many comparable breaches to this one. The closest in modern times may be Hillary Clinton's email server being used for government business. In that case, the FBI investigated and declined to bring charges, under the expectation that a jury would be unlikely to render a guilty verdict.

Okay, fine. But the FBI investigated and laid out the facts.

My fear is that the current administration sees this as a PR problem. No, this was an operational failure. We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.

We should expect the FBI to investigate this, too. But I worry the facts are too inconvenient for even that level of accountability.

[bb88]

Why would we expect Patel and Bongino to investigate anything here? They were put there to investigate anyone else other than the current administration.

Why would any FBI agent take a risk on investigating anyone potentially in current or future administrations? They'll get fired later when the political winds change.

[tromp]

With the current administration I expect that fierce loyalty trumps both competence and accountability. Sadly, I expect to see many more such examples of amateur hour.

[codewench]

18 USC 793(f) seems to apply here:

"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing ... through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust ... and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."

We can only guess about the "prompt reporting of the issue", but from what I've seen and heard I'm willing to put money on the fact that, no, this was not reported.

[throwaway2037]

    > through gross negligence

If you talk to someone with a law degree (judge, lawyer, whatever), they will tell you that "gross negligence" is very high barrier to cross in US law. Most people misunderstand that. It is very unlikely that any of the people in that chat group would be found grossly negligent, especially for their first mistake. Please do not read that last sentence as an apology or excuse for their behaviour; they should be reprimanded for it.

[bb88]

Why would the FBI investigate anyone who would be pardoned by the president anyway?

[belter]

Don't worry, Courts are going away also...

"Speaker Mike Johnson floats eliminating federal courts as GOP ramps up attacks on judges" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johns...

[belter]

And Law Firms..

"Donald Trump widens war on legal industry with order targeting Jenner & Block" - https://www.ft.com/content/4f1aca93-62b5-419f-9182-a3a10bbe7...

"Legal community shaken by a powerful law firm's decision to give in to Trump's demands" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/legal-...

"Trump’s crackdown on top law firms spreads to Congress" - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/24/retribution-big-law...

"The person predicted the impact could extend beyond Congress: “If you’re Google or Meta or Apple – you’re thinking, ‘Do I really want to use these firms?’ That could make it harder to work with the White House...."

[imglorp]

Yes and the legislature after that.

These are all smart people, so it boggles the mind to wonder how they can install a totalitarian regime without knowing the next two steps in the playbook.

[chasil]

Jefferson might have been called a totalitarian had the word existed when he signed the judiciary act of 1802, which removed judges added by federalists.

I have learned about it this week.

https://gingrich360.com/2025/03/18/an-intolerable-judicial-d...

[unholythree]

Well Jefferson certainly wasn't ever wrong about anything. He certainly wouldn't have held any beliefs contrary to 20th or 21st century values. /s

Obviously the dude had a lot of good ideas, but just grabbing anything he said and acting like it's gospel is flawed for dare I say a pretty glaring reason...

[bb88]

Relevant quote here:

    Jefferson wrote that making judges the ultimate deciders of law would “place 
    us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”

Seriously that's cognitive dissonance 101. "Elon Musk can't be an oligarch. He's a great Americ... I mean South African".

I also hesitate why anyone would want a 360 degree view of Newt Gingrich. In real life or otherwise. /s

[dcow]

Gabbard confirmed that no classified information was contained in the conversation.

[adgjlsfhk1]

And promptly proceeded to tell the same senators that she couldn't share the information with them because it was classified.

[kevin_thibedeau]

They are playing with semantics on minor technicalities that are irrelevant because federal code is expansive enough to make this breach a clear violation of the law on multiple counts. The Senators rightly grilled these incompetents on why couldn't they disclose the nature of the communications if they were unclassified and not sensitive.

The capable adults from the 45th administration are gone because they were too responsible. You can see what happens when you draw from a pool of nothing but drooling sub-80s.

[ceejayoz]

"We are currently clean on OPSEC" is an odd thing to throw into the chat if it doesn't involve any secrets.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03/26/us/trump-news

> “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Hegseth wrote in the chat. “1345: Trigger Based F-18 Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME—also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”

If I were a potential "target terrorist" and this chat had leaked before the strikes, I'd make damned sure I wasn't at my "known location" that day.

[xeromal]

But also decided she couldn't share the same information with the committee.

[Analemma_]

“We investigated ourselves and found ourselves not guilty.”

[MPSFounder]

Traitors like her being in the highest offices of the land makes me sick. I will never forget images of her meeting Assad after that sob gazed children with chemical weapons, or her voting present to an impeachment. I wouldn't believe that traitor if she told me the Russians were at my doorstep. We have a circus filled with clowns unfortunately. The desk with Patel and her being interrogated is such a clown show.

[thefreeman]

“confirmed”

[mandeepj]

> The closest in modern times may be Hillary Clinton's email server being used for government business.

Wait, there's more!! https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cummings-jared-kushner...

[rcpt]

T took a top secret binder about Russian election interference to his beach house and we never got it back.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...

[lmeyerov]

There is no reason to believe we are lucky. Instead, this is more of a canary in the coal mine that the DOD OIG and Congress are less able to excuse for a long-running hazard.

How much of the administration, for how long, and for what, is using hackable systems and without mandated audit trails for protected communications? Whether external hackers are already successfully snooping, or internal cover-ups are happening of ongoing corruption, both are deeply problematic, and can be happening in parallel to stupid leaks like this. Likewise, we can't even investigate and cleanup properly because these people are illegally deleting the forensic data for their illegal and insecure actions.

It's not even a surprise. Ex: It's already pretty well documented to embarrassing extents like the president flushing official documents down toilets and clogging them. Ex: The admins use of signal was a thing in the first term as well. The only new thing afaict is the public and checks-and-balances people have the evidence in front of them of illegal use when accepting the lies and criminality.

[georgemcbay]

> We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.

This time. We also have no idea how many times this has happened without the unique circumstances where the person incorrectly included would draw attention to the leak as part of their job as a journalist.

Generally speaking, if something like this can happen once, it has probably happened more than once.

We probably are very lucky that the time it very publicly happened was fairly early on in the tenure of this dumpster fire of a Presidential cabinet.

Of course instead of them seeing it this way they are certain to keep going after the journalist in an attempt to make him the bad guy of the story to project blame away, because that is what incompetent people do.

[jameshart]

Right, among the reasons not to use Signal for this sort of thing is that it is explicitly difficult to verify within Signal that a contact is who you think it is. It can be a secure channel if used correctly. This shows these people are not using it correctly.

[mulmen]

> FBI investigated and declined to bring charges

Does the FBI make this determination? Wouldn’t that be the Attorney General’s call?

[bb88]

Yeah, they do. The US Attorneys and the Attorney General are allowed to give input typically into whether any investigation is prosecutable.

Now did they investigate it? Probably not.

What's interesting to me is that personal phones were not seized for forensic examination though.

Were the phones hacked by foreign agents? What other uses was signal used for?

[dragonwriter]

That's backwards. Prosecutors don't give input, they decide whether to charge. The FBI investigates, but they aren’t the ones who are responsible for taking cases to court.

[bb88]

The FBI makes charging decisions all the time. The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.

Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.

The demarcation line between the two is when the charges are filed in federal court.

Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016. Not because she committed any crime, but because they wouldn't likely get a conviction at trial.

[dragonwriter]

> The FBI makes charging decisions all the time.

No, they don't.

> The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.

They investigate before there are charges.

> Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.

The FBI is part of the DoJ, but there aren't charges until a prosecutor—not an FBI agent—either gets a grand jury to return an indictment or files a criminal information (the latrer only an option for minor offenses or if the defendant waives indictment, usually as part of a plea bargain.) Prosecution isn't a separate thing from charges, it is what charges are.

> Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016.

No, famously Comey announced that the FBI recommended that no charges be filed. Like I said, you have it backwards: FBI makes recommendations, federal prosecutors decide to charge, or not.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/fbi-recommends-no-charges-f...

“FBI Director James B. Comey said today that the Bureau has recommended to the Department of Justice that no charges are appropriate following an extensive investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.”

[bb88]

Let's drop this. I do agree with you on Musk being a fascist -- or more specifically the average person might be correct in concluding the Musk is a fascist.

[ModernMech]

> The FBI makes charging decisions all the time. The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.

Have you ever seen law and order? They explain it succinctly in the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMalvNeJFLk

[sophacles]

The FBI is part of the DoJ... they are in fact the investigative arm of the DoJ and both bring the US attourneys evidence of crimes so that the attourneys can do the court work and they go find evidence as requested by the attourneys for ongoing cases. The fact that you're treating them as such separate entitites is indicative that maybe you should learn a bit more about how these things work.

[tayo42]

> We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.

Might not even be the first time already, just the first time they messed up and we found out...

[nla]

Hunter Biden: Hold my beer.

[chasil]

Assuming this to be true, this conversation is over.

"The Biden administration installed the Signal messaging app on CIA computers and approved it for official government use."

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/25/has-the-staffer...

[bb88]

It looks like it was approved only for CIA use with permissible use. Even though it was installed, did not mean it was suitable for all communications.

Here's the important relevant quote:

    "It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate
     for work purposes. Provided that any decisions that are 
     made are also recorded through formal channels. So 
     those were procedures that were implemented. My staff 
     implemented those processes," Ratcliffe said.

    "My communications, to be clear, in a Signal message 
     group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not 
     include classified information," he added.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-director-john-ratcliffe-defen...

[sorcerer-mar]

It's reasonable /u/chasil doesn't know this, but obviously there's no chance that Ratcliffe doesn't know this. Really makes one think!

"My communications weren't classified" — my is doing some work there.

[bb88]

The classified community is one built on trust -- fundamentally that you won't leak information to others, perceived enemies or otherwise. This extends to elected or appointed officials and federal judges ruling on classified matters.

But honestly most of the people in the group will be loyal to the US regardless of leader's political affiliation.

But what they do ask is that classified information remain secret -- particularly if you're in harms way.

[somenameforme]

There's also the temporal issue. Communications are classified, or not, after their creation. So we might add:

'My communications weren't classified at the time I made them.'

[bb88]

That's a distinction without a difference.

If you're in that intelligence community, you know exactly what is classified and what is not. I could imagine some information being so secretive it's not written down -- but instead passed verbally in person.

If a CIA agent has intelligence on an Israeli operation, it's classified, regardless of whether it was written down or not.

[flyingcircus3]

I think that there is a parallel story to this one that is equally as interesting. There is one group of consumers of this story who see the receipts provided by Jeffery Goldberg, along with confirmation of their authenticity from a spokesperson at the National Security Council, followed by admissions by cabinet member participants of the Signal chat in hearings before congress, and those consumers of all this news can only conclude that the evidence is about as conclusive as you can get that Jeffery Goldberg is telling the truth, that these people are sharing the names of active intelligence officers, and describing imminent plans of action of the US military.

Then there is another group of consumers of this story, with the same access to all of the same evidence, and all of the same first person confirmations, who confidently declare the argument that this might be illegal null and void because Joe Biden allowed the CIA to use signal, and are persuaded away from accepting all of that evidence by articles with that contain such gems as "what the media wont tell you about the Atlantic hit piece", "Democrats talking points on this story quickly unraveled", and "help us continue to expose the lefts desperate attempts to manufacture scandals".

How can propaganda be so effective that people lose the skill of object permanence?

[chasil]

I have little doubt that Jeffery Goldberg is telling the truth.

So, was he added to the conversation inadvertently, or was it deliberate?

On the question of whether the use of the application was negligent, well, that is now moot.

[rcpt]

There is just no way this is deliberate. They have nothing to gain from this.

We need to stop thinking these guys are playing 3D chess when they try to shove the pieces up their nose

[forgotoldacc]

Call me crazy, but they have lots to gain. They got to see whether a journalist would dare stand up against them knowing very well they risk being found with 50 terabytes of illegal porn on their computer then dying of a suicide with 2 shots in the back of the head. Turns out journalists aren't yet afraid of them.

They also got a loyalty test with their own people. Everyone is saying "not my problem" and accepting no responsibility. They've passed that test.

Then the final loyalty test is of their voters. When this first broke, the script was "Oof. This is bad. Heads will roll because of this." When it became apparent that, no, heads will not roll, the script amongst them changed. "This doesn't matter. Why would it matter? Everyone uses insecure things and makes mistakes. Why did the journalist embarrass our country?" It's very obvious that the breaking point with their base is very far away, assuming there is one.

And the final result is seeing whether there will be consequences. A small time guy can get pinched for this and the president and everyone else will remain completely void of responsibility no matter what. But it's pretty obvious that even a small time guy won't be facing consequences.

So they've gained something very valuable from this: the realization that there really are no consequences. They're going to keep pushing things like this and they'll get bigger and bigger each time. And each time it sets a new standard for a tolerable level of bad. And any time someone supportive of them starts to think "maybe this isn't good", they'll be quick to rush in and say "it's a nothingburger, just like the last thing they were whining about." And they'll fall back in line.

[ModernMech]

It's a nice theory, but the reason everyone in this administration is acting with such impunity is because they already believe there really are no consequences. They had that realization when they fomented an insurrection in 2021 and not only did nothing happen to them, they were voted back into office. What more confirmation would they need?

These people are just brutes lumbering through a government the fully control now, smashing and doing whatever they want. There's no 4D chess.

[bb88]

Well the FBI investigated it already -- even though the Hillary Clinton investigation took years -- and said there would not be charges brought.

It's a win on government efficiency I guess (no more year long investigations). But also, this is clearly not the first time they used Signal, and it won't be the last.

[flyingcircus3]

Just to clarify on what is moot, you are claiming that sharing classified, perhaps TS/SCI information, over signal, as well as deleting the messages, which are both illegal when isolated from any specific communication method, has all been blessed as above board and legal, simply because Joe Biden allowed Signal usage at the CIA?

Couldn't every whistleblower and double agent from now on just make sure to do their leaking over signal, and therefore receive the magical immunity your logic claims signal usage provides?

[chasil]

Then act against the Biden administration that approved it.

Move against those that approved its use.

That would be an interesting turn of events.

[thatnerdyguy]

... but I think the argument goes "Signal can be used for unclassified communication, so we are OK"... great! .... but why were specific war plans and CIA officer names NOT classified? There are definite problems either way you slice it.

[flyingcircus3]

This exemplifies my point. I laid out how illogical it would be for your claim to be accurate that Biden approved otherwise illegal activity so long as it occured over signal.

And you've simply incorporated this as additional straw for your strawman.

Does this mornings additional confirmation in the form of messages including times, planes, and weapons further solidify your feelings that this is all Bidens fault?

[20after4]

There is also a large group who think it's a nothing burger and that Goldberg is simply lying or exaggerating about the nature and seriousness of the messages that were omitted from the reporting.

[flyingcircus3]

Luckily for those people, more messages were released this morning, with times, planes and weapons described.

[subjectsigma]

lol no, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about

[sarcasmatwork]

Incorrect.

"Clinton has said that she never used her personal email to send information that was marked classified at the time, although some of her emails had been retroactively classified.

Comey says that's not true. Of 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in 2014, FBI investigators found 110 emails containing information that was classified at the time the email was sent. Eight of those were top secret, the highest level of classification."

"Another 2,000 emails have been retroactively classified since they were sent, Comey said."

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/05/484785586...

[dudinax]

In reading deeper, many or most of these "classified" emails are comments on news stories that revealed information that another department would rather keep secret, such as news articles about CIA drone strikes, while the CIA at the time wouldn't acknowledge they had a a drone program.

Clinton argued at the time that such emails aren't and shouldn't be classified, since she didn't discuss any information sourced from the CIA, but only the publicly available news article. That seems to me to be at least a reasonable stance.

[vdqtp3]

> Clinton argued at the time that such emails aren't and shouldn't be classified, since she didn't discuss any information sourced from the CIA, but only the publicly available news article. That seems to me to be at least a reasonable stance.

It's absolutely a reasonable stance. However, the rules aren't reasonable. For instance, as someone who held a clearance at the time, discussing/disseminating the Snowden leaks that were published in national news was considered a violation.

[jimt1234]

And Hillary sat in front of Congress for 11 hours.