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.
"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.
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.
https://apnews.com/article/tulsi-gabbard-assad-syria-trip-dn...
> “Her response was, ‘How do you know it was Assad and Russia and not ISIS?’” Mustafa recalled of the exchange. “Ludicrous question: ISIS doesn’t have airplanes.” Henning, the spokeswoman for the Trump transition, denied the exchange occurred.
> Two years later, she echoed similar doubts about the Trump administration’s assessment that the Assad regime used sarin gas to attack civilians. A United Nations panel and numerous other foreign governments came to the same conclusion.
https://apnews.com/article/gabbard-trump-putin-intelligence-...
> “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she posted on Twitter at the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
> Gabbard’s remarks about Russia haven’t gone unnoticed in Moscow, where state-run media have praised her and even jokingly referred to her as a Russian agent. An article published Friday in RIA Novosti, a major Russian state-controlled news agency, called Gabbard “superwoman” and noted her past appearances on Russian TV, claiming that Ukrainian intelligence views her as “probably an agent of the Russian special services.”
What? That's simply not true even by a long shot. In no way shape or form is she condoning anything by being willing to engage with someone non-violently.
Go read my other response. I've quoted Tulsi talking about her trip to Syria. She's trying to find a way to end suffering. I'm not sure you really understand how much damage our own government has done to people and how we appear to others. Gabbard has more courage than you'll ever know.
> Maybe my morals just make me ill-suited to meet murderers (in a non-official capacity nonetheless).
So you're a pacifist. War is war. I'm not defending Assad I'm reminding you that people and countries do horrible things in war on both sides. The US, the atomic bomb, missiles from the sky in the middle east, collateral damage, killing families of terrorists. I think you'd have a hard time if you tried to apply your moral framework to "the good guys".
Painful as it may be, there are valid moral frameworks where ending suffering may be more important, immediate, and urgent than refusing to acknowledge another state's leader because they're horrible.
IDK... I don't have strong enough hatred in my soul to condemn someone for "meeting with a dictator" if they think there might be a path to end suffering. Honestly to me that sounds like someone with courage to do what's necessary to make a difference.
>
Gabbard said her trip included stops in Aleppo and Damascus, Syria’s capital. She also visited Beirut during the trip, which began in mid-January. Gabbard said she also met with refugees, Syrian opposition leaders, widows and family members of Syrians fighting alongside groups like al-Qaeda, and Syrians aligned with the Assad regime.
Gabbard said that the U.S. has “waged wars of regime change” in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Yet each has resulted “in unimaginable suffering, devastating loss of life, and the strengthening of groups like al-Qaeda” and the Islamic State group, she said.
“My visit to Syria has made it abundantly clear,” Gabbard said. “Our counterproductive regime change war does not serve America’s interest, and it certainly isn’t in the interest of the Syrian people.”
>
THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT THE LEFT HAS BEEN SAYING FOR DECADES. We need to get our hands our of other wars and stop causing suffering in peoples/cultures/nations we don't understand.
But oh no because she's willing to work with Trump and not against him she's a filthy fucking traitor. Your kind of rhetoric is what makes me sick.
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.
"Speaker Mike Johnson floats eliminating federal courts as GOP ramps up attacks on judges" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johns...
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.
I have learned about it this week.
https://gingrich360.com/2025/03/18/an-intolerable-judicial-d...
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...
His flaws certainly belie such an assertion.
I'm saying that what Jefferson did was to remove problematic judges.
Congress had, has, and will have the power to reshape the federal judiciary as they choose. They can erase all courts below the supreme, and they can add or remove justices to the highest court as they choose (excepting present members, which are lifetime). Thus the saying "pack the court."
To challenge an executive that has friends in congress is a dangerous proposition for a federal judge.
It could end badly.
This implies that the courts cannot be an effective check and balance on the other branches. Aren't they meant to be?
It's always been controversial whether a court can disparage a law of broad application or impugn the president directly. The "effectiveness" of those functions was always a little speculative.
Lower courts typically deal with questions of fact and how they intersect with questions of law; higher courts (appeals courts and Supreme Court) typically deal with questions of law (ambiguity/interpretation) exclusively. Courts as an institution don't serve a "truth-finding function" so much as a "law-ambiguity removing function".
> disparage > impugn
Everyone seems focused on whether a court has the right to, like, insult the president personally. But that's not really the important part of what they're doing. They _of course_ have the right to question whether the law allows what the president is doing -- and questioning this is not disparagement or impugning.
Jefferson wrote that making judges the ultimate deciders of law would “place
us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
I also hesitate why anyone would want a 360 degree view of Newt Gingrich. In real life or otherwise. /s
Clinton fared poorly under Democratic control of the house in his first two years, which was lost in the midterms.
Clinton prospered with Gengrich, and the .com era occurred under their aegis.
Some bad decisions were made by them, no doubt.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/newt-gi...
It is advocated by both sides, to this day.
The obvious case in modern point is Schumer.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/23/chuck-schume...
This is why bothsidism is ridiculous. Both sides are the same! Both are accusing the other one of something wrong! Oh, it does not matter than one is lying and other is saying the truth.
"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...."
> through gross negligence
Does the FBI make this determination? Wouldn’t that be the Attorney General’s call?
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?
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.
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.”
Have you ever seen law and order? They explain it succinctly in the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMalvNeJFLk
"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...
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.
"My communications weren't classified" — my is doing some work there.
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.
'My communications weren't classified at the time I made them.'
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.
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?
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.
We need to stop thinking these guys are playing 3D chess when they try to shove the pieces up their nose
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.
These people are just brutes lumbering through a government the fully control now, smashing and doing whatever they want. There's no 4D chess.
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.
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?
Move against those that approved its use.
That would be an interesting turn of events.
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?
If the Clinton email server thing was worth a rap on the knuckles, this one requires the immediate firing and possibly prosecution of every single person on that group text, each of whom should have known better.
One possible explanation is that it happens all the time.
Signal prevents what should be official government communications from being recorded. If it's recorded it can be investigated.
This is absolutely false, or as the kids call it, "misinformation".
A 3 second Google search confirms:
100 emails contained information that should have been deemed classified at the time they were sent, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret". An additional 2,093 emails were retroactively designated confidential by the State Department.
The whole issue with her emails is she purposely never labeled anything so as to have plausible deniability.
"But here emails" was just republicans doing what they always do and pretending to be angry over mild stuff while giving own people pass over big stuff.
I think a decent case can be made that one rounds up to the other, but I guess that case seems more like an argument to be made than a fact to be corrected.
I'm not going to defend classifying embarrassing information because it's well -- embarrassing. But the established trend is to classify information "just to be safe" and let someone else make the declassifying decisions, particularly someone that's not you.
There was a weird issue with Wikileaks in that publicly released information was still considered classified, and any documents must be still treated as such.
Was that silly, yes. This led to a weird issue where journalists and members of the public had more access to certain classified documents than people holding clearances.
That thing where one side is given unbelievable benefit of the doubt that literally ignores what was happening or is happening is not healthy.
Wait, there's more!! https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cummings-jared-kushner...
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...
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.
"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...
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.
Might not even be the first time already, just the first time they messed up and we found out...
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.
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.