Russia May Already Have Accessed Group Chat, Ex-Official Warns

Trump officials made an obvious critical error when they accidentally added a journalist earlier this month to a Signal group chat discussing the specifics of an imminent attack on Houthi targets in Yemen. But they made another profound mistake by potentially inadvertently sharing the details of the battle plan with one of America’s longest adversaries.

The Trump administration’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff was in Russia when he was added to the chat on the retail app, a mistake that intelligence experts say basically hand-delivered news of the attack to the Kremlin hours before it took place.

“The Russians have whatever Witkoff was doing or saying on his personal cell phone,” former national security adviser Susan Rice told MeidasTouch Tuesday. “There should never have been a Signal chat used as the vehicle for a discussion involving anything sensitive regarding national security. The Russians undoubtedly have it.”

The Atlantic, whose editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg witnessed the chat unfold first-hand, released uncensored screenshots of the Signal exchange Wednesday morning after several top Trump officials disparaged the outlet, insisting that the attack details were not confidential.

Some of those details included down-to-the-minute scheduling for the launch of U.S. F-18 attack planes toward Yemen, “trigger based” strikes, and the launch of sea-based subsonic cruise missiles.

It also included some of America’s top officials reacting to news of the airstrikes with fire, fist, and American flag emojis.

The monumental slip-up was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

The Trump administration has offered conflicting excuses to sidestep The Atlantic’s report, including claiming that the chat never happened (despite a National Security Council spokesperson that confirmed its existence). The admin changed its tune Wednesday after the release of screenshots from the chat, with National Security Adviser Mike Waltz—who created the chat and added Greenberg—claiming that the story was false because it didn’t include weapons (it did), methods (again, it did), and what he described as “war plans.”

“BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests,” Waltz wrote.

The federal judge Trump currently hates the most (an ever-changing list) will now preside over the Signalgate lawsuit.

Judge James Boasberg has been making headlines after blocking the Trump administration’s invocation of the wartime 1798 Alien Enemies Act to carry out indiscriminate, extrajudicial deportations of people he claimed were Tren de Agua members to El Salvador.

The Trump administration ignored Boasberg’s order on the shoddy grounds that it was spoken aloud and not yet written, and the planes took off. When Boasberg ordered the planes to turn around, Salvadoran autocrat Nayib Bukele celebrated along with members of the Trump team. On March 15, Boasberg hit back, levying a restraining order against the Trump administration, blocking them from carrying out anymore deportations using the Alien Enemies Act’s wartime powers. Days later, Boasberg is still demanding more information on the deportations, and Trump continues to deny him.

Now, Boasberg will be at the bench to oversee the Trump administration’s most massive gaffe to date.

“You really can’t script this,” wrote Politico’s Kyle Cheney after Wednesday’s news that Boasberg will rule on the Signalgate lawsuit. “The same week the Trump admin invokes the state secrets privilege to deny Boasberg info, he is assigned the lawsuit over the Trump administration’s apparent carelessness with state secrets.”

Trump officials were sued Tuesday by the government watchdog American Oversight Tuesday after reports that The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat in which multiple cabinet members and Vice President JD Vance were discussing an attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The administration has denied that anything classified was discussed and Trump himself blamed it on someone who worked at a “lower level.” Now, the judge he’s been battling with will be shedding even more light on the embarrassment.

Trump has yet to comment on Boasberg’s new post, but his Truth Social post from the midst of the Alien Enemies Act battle certainly give us some insight into how he may feel about this:

“This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President - He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING!” Trump wrote of Boasberg on Truth Social on March 18. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Having to deal with Boasberg again will surely add more fuel to his hatred for what he thinks are “activist” judges.

As Trump continues to cut federal programs used by millions of Americans, he proposed financially compensating the MAGA loyalists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In an interview with Newsmax Tuesday, host Greg Kelly asked Trump if there’s any talk of a “compensation fund” for prosecuted January 6 rioters, because they lost “opportunity” and “income.”

“Well there’s talk about that, we have a lot of people talking about it, a lot of the people that are in government now talk about it, because a lot of people in government really like that group of people,” Trump responded, referring to the rioters as “patriots” who went to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.”

Upon taking office, Trump issued a sweeping pardon for some 1,500 people who tried to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.

“These people are incredible people; they were treated so unfairly, so horribly,” Trump said of the insurrectionists.

The January 6 attack caused an estimated $1.5 million in damage to the Capitol, and more than 140 police officers were injured—a stat line well deserving of payment, according to the president. Only a small portion of court-ordered restitution payments have been made by offenders to offset the costs of repairs, according to ABC News.

Trump specifically mentioned “big MAGA fan” Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force Veteran who was fatally shot by a police officer during the attack. He called the officer, who is still employed, a “disgrace.”

The president claimed that no other group in history has been treated as badly as January 6 rioters. “The judges, the system, the hatred, the vitriol, the prosecutors, the way they wanted to destroy these people,” Trump said. Rich, coming from the man who is weaponizing those same mechanisms to unlawfully detain and deport thousands of immigrants.

Americans are rallying behind Democrats—even in deep Trump territory.

In a major upset, Democrat James Malone usurped a seat in Pennsylvania’s state Senate in a special election, flipping a district that had voted for Donald Trump by more than 15 points mere months ago. Malone previously served as the mayor of East Petersburg and will succeed Republican Senator Ryan Aument, who resigned from the office in December to serve as a state director for Senator Dave McCormick.

“I’m very excited and really, really happy that all the work we put in has paid off,” Malone told WGAL-TV.

“Everyday voters are not liking what they’re seeing at the federal level; they don’t like the chaos. We want to be sure that we, as Pennsylvania, are standing up for our neighbors and are standing up for our state,” Malone continued. “And brotherly love is Pennsylvania, and that just proved out. Kindness over criticism, right? So that’s what we’re trying to do, and I think that that really is what we’re looking at, moving forward.”

Malone’s victory followed another Democratic win Tuesday in the Keystone State, after Dan Goughnour won a House seat, maintaining a Democratic stronghold in Pennsylvania’s lower chamber.

The wins were roundly celebrated by the larger Democratic Party, which saw its voters excoriate their inaction on a GOP budget resolution that promised whopping Medicaid cuts at the national level last week.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saluted Malone’s strategy, urging the party to refocus on winning critical local elections, “from school board to councils to state legislatures.”

Republicans, meanwhile, felt the sting.

“Damn,” posted Elon Musk, reacting to a screenshot of the election results.

But Malone had a quick reply.

“I’ll take this as a compliment, because Elon Musk knows I’m about to get to work for the everyday people of Pennsylvania, not him and his billionaire friends,” he wrote Wednesday morning.

The Trump administration has finally settled on one story: Someone else within the administration—and not national security adviser Mike Waltz—is to blame for the massive internal fuckup that resulted in Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, being added to a Signal group chat in which top defense officials were planning a strike on the Houthis in Yemen.

“So your staffer did not put his contact information.… How did it end up in your phone?” asked Fox’s Laura Ingraham, referring to Goldberg’s contact information and adviser Mike Waltz’s phone.

“Well that’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Waltz replied.

“But that’s a pretty big problem—”

“That’s why we’ve got the best technical minds, right?”

“That’s disturbing.”

“I mean, I’m sure everybody out there has had a contact where it was … said one person and then a different phone number [came up],” Waltz replied.

“But you’ve never talked to him before, so how’s [Goldberg’s] number on your phone?” pressed Ingraham, asking the most obvious question in all this.

“Well if you have somebody else’s contact and then somehow it sucked it in,” Waltz said, seemingly trying to convince even himself.

“Oh, someone sent you that contact….. Was there someone else supposed to be on the chat that wasn’t on the chat?”

“So the person that I thought was on there was never on there.”

“Who was that?”

“Well, look, Laura, I take responsibility, I built the group.”

Trump echoed Waltz’s retelling of events, directly blaming a lower-level staffer.

“What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line, with permission—somebody that was with Mike Waltz, worked for Mike Waltz, at a lower level—had, I guess, Goldberg’s number, and called through the app. And somehow this guy ended up on the call,” the president said, who seemed to think this was some kind of conference call.

“It wasn’t classified as I understand it, there was no classified information, there was no problem. And the attack was a tremendous success. So I can only go by what I’ve been told, I wasn’t involved in it.”

The White House has claimed over and over that there were no war plans and nothing classified within the Signal chat. The screenshots that Goldberg first published—and the others he posted Tuesday after being called a liar by the administration—directly contradict that.