
The larger problem uncovered by the Signal scandal
After the White House argued, repeatedly, that there was no classified information in the now-infamous group chat of national security officials, The Atlantic published it.
CNN reporters annotated the entire chat, which included Hegseth's description of F-18s and drones preparing to strike targets, which anybody listening in would have known were to occur in Yemen since the name of the chat included the word 'Houthi.'
The White House and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth continued to argue, even after release of the chat, that the information wasn't classified, but only sensitive.
Multiple experts advised on CNN Wednesday that people should not get sidetracked by whether or not the information was classified.
What's below are the assessments of:
Retired Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmitt, who during his military career worked as deputy director for strategy and plans for US Central Command, and then worked in the State Department as assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs during the George W. Bush administration
and Beth Sanner, a CNN National Security analyst who was deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration during portions of both the first Trump and Joe Biden administrations.
Kimmitt and Sanner both appeared on CNN Wednesday, and I subsequently followed up with Sanner on the phone.
CNN has reported that sources within the Pentagon believe that the information shared by Hegseth, which detailed when, to the minute, US fighters and drones would strike Houthi targets, was clearly classified.
Whether it was technically classified is beside the point, according to Kimmitt.
'I think everybody's missing the relevant issue,' he said, noting that Hegseth has the authority to declassify Pentagon information.
'If he says it's not classified, it's not classified,' Kimmit said. But 'the fundamental question that we should be asking is, 'Should it have been classified?' And the answer, of course, is yes.'
'I think we're watching a lot of bob and weave, instead of just making this simple,' said Sanner, who added that the rule of thumb is that anything that shouldn't be put into an unclassified email should be treated as classified material.
'Another really easy way to look at this is, 'If I'm sitting in Moscow or Beijing, would I be happy to get this information and think that I've gotten something really interesting?'' she said. Obviously yes.
First, the military portions of what was shared clearly should not have been shared.
'If there are planes, trains automobiles, whatever, heading toward an attack, it is classified,' Sanner said.
And if Hegseth wants to declassify something, there is a process of documentation that should be followed, she said.
Sanner said that the simple existence of the group chat on Signal likely did not violate any protocol, but when Vance and Hegseth got into a debate, that is the type of information that enemies would be particularly interested in.
'They have learned so much about how policymaking is being done in the US government, and, in fact, how it's not being done,' she said.
'The president has made a decision to go to war, but clearly that has been without complete deliberations, and that's something we should get our heads around,' she said.
Vance raised concerns about the strike in the group chat, but there's no evidence those concerns were conveyed to the president.
The White House and Hegseth have argued that what Hegseth shared in the chat was not, technically speaking, a 'war plan' even though it included some details about timing, targets and method of attack.
Asked if this was a semantic distinction between a war plan and a plan of attack, Kimmitt said no.
'There's a distinction with a difference,' he argued.
'War plans are preparatory plans that come in excruciating detail that are ready to conduct an operation in the future. They are plans. They're not operations,' he said.
When something becomes operational, like the Yemen attack, it might become even more sensitive than a war plan.
'War plans are probably less sensitive because they are speculative in nature. Operations plans, which we saw released as part of these texts, clearly are less speculative, more active, and put more soldiers and sailors and airmen at risk.'
But when Kimmitt was asked about the argument made by Democratic members of Congress that this Signal chat actively put US service members in harm's way, he said that is probably a 'somewhat inflammatory' view. Signal is a relatively secure app, and the operation was in fact successful, he said.
'I came up in an Army that was somewhat forgiving of mistakes that were made unintentionally and did not create any harm,' he said.
The White House and Hegseth have gone to great lengths to argue there was no classified material in the Signal chat. Kimmitt argued that is making the problem worse.
'The coverup, or the pushing back on this, I think it's probably something that doesn't show a lot of maturity, and people ought to think very hard about it. Just admit the screw-up. Fix it. Don't do it again,' he said.
The cavalier attitude of using an app like Signal for these kinds of deliberations needs to change, Sanner said.
Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were both in foreign countries during portions of the group chat, and Sanner said the administration needs to tighten things up as it deals with countries like Russia, China and Iran.
The app may be encrypted, but the phone being used – and we don't know if these were personal or government phones – might be compromised, particularly in a foreign country.
The issue should not be a partisan one, Sanner said, but rather an opportunity for change.
'We have to understand that all the politicization of this issue is making it harder for everyone to do the right thing, which is to fix their comms so that our adversaries cannot know what we're doing and how we're doing it,' she said.

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The Hill
35 minutes ago
- The Hill
GOP backs Trump on LA, but there's skepticism over deploying Marines
Republican senators support President Trump's crackdown on people protesting his administration's work to deport thousands of migrants, but they are uncertain about the Pentagon's deployment of 700 active-duty Marines to California. The Trump White House appears confident that a showdown with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) over illegal immigration is good politics for the president. But some GOP lawmakers are worried about the prospect of street clashes spreading to other cities and of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to get the active-duty military more involved in responding to mass protests. There's no GOP opposition to a tough response to street protests. Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection next year in a state Trump lost to Biden, said 'the violence that we're witnessing against law enforcement, ICE officers in L.A.' and the property damage is 'completely unacceptable and does call for a strong response. But she warned that 'sending in active-duty troops to deal with domestic law enforcement issues raises very serious concerns.' 'I do not agree with the president's decision to do that,' she said, before pivoting to support for Trump's decision to call in the National Guard without the consent of local officials. 'I think calling up the National Guard, which has experience in dealing with domestic disasters, whether man-made or weather-related, does make sense,' Collins said. 'But I do not think that sending in active-duty Marines is a good idea. 'I think it puts them in a very difficult position,' she added. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he hopes 'cooler heads prevail' on both sides of the political spectrum as the administration continues operations to deport migrants. Rounds said he doesn't want to see street clashes and property destruction play out in other cities. 'Hopefully it does not occur and hopefully cooler heads prevail all the way around,' he said. 'The challenge … is you've got individuals that are creating a scene when [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is coming in and doing their job.' Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a senior member of the Armed Services panel, declined to comment on the deployment of Marines. A poll of 4,309 U.S. adults by YouGov found that only 34 percent of Americans approved of Trump deploying Marines to Los Angeles, while 47 percent disapproved. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday defended Trump's decision to deploy 4,000 members of the California National Guard to help maintain the peace in Los Angeles, but he distanced himself from the decision to mobilize active-duty Marines, telling reporters he didn't know Trump's precise authority for doing so. 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Newsom accused Trump of 'intentionally causing chaos' by mobilizing troops, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) said the move was 'completely unnecessary' because the Los Angeles Police Department was 'well equipped' to handle protests.' Trump's deployment of active-duty troops is raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether he will invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. The president cited the law in January as potential authority to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, if necessary. White House aides drafted a proclamation during Trump's first term in 2020 to invoke the Insurrection Act in case Trump wanted to deploy active-duty troops to Washington, D.C., to respond to protests over the murder of George Floyd earlier that year. The president decided not to, despite calls by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who wrote in a New York Times op-ed to 'send in the troops.' Gen. 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He said the National Guard troops — in contrast to the Marines — 'are federally activated' and 'members of the armed services under Title 10 rather than Title 32,' referring to the transfer of the California National Guard from Newsom to Trump. 'That was not part of the discussion,' he said of the Insurrection Act. 'I know it's available to him,' referring to Trump, 'but right now it's not necessary.' Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) claimed that the Democratic officials in California and Los Angeles 'seem not to be very concerned with controlling the violence' and 'in some ways are defiant of federal law' by refusing to work with federal officials to deport migrants who are living in the country illegally. He said 'my preference would be to have local, not national' law enforcement and troops handle local protests but warned that waiting too long to send in the National Guard could allow protests to spiral out of control, like they did in some cities during summer 2020 after Floyd's murder.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
The days around Trump's trade war announcements saw spikes in lawmaker stock market transactions
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The White House that day announced it would impose hefty tariffs on China and the S&P 500 closed at its lowest level so far this year. Then came April 9. 'BE COOL!' and 'THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY,' Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that day, hours before his White House announced a 90-day pause on tariffs against a number of countries save for China. The announcement set the S&P 500 on track to post its biggest single-day gain since October 2008. House and Senate lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long traded stocks, and their reported transactions so far this Congress have largely mirrored Americans' high volume of trading activity amid the frenetic market shifts fueled by the president's whipsaw economic policy. While lawmakers who spoke with CNN denied having advance briefings, some who bought ahead of the president's tariff reprieve stood to make significant gains after it spurred a market rebound. Lawmakers told CNN the trades were made largely by third-party financial advisors with unilateral control over their portfolios. But experts and some on Capitol Hill say questions around the timing of the transactions strikes at the heart of an ethical and optical question that has long dogged Congress: Can lawmakers play the market without generating suspicion their access to information gives them an unfair advantage, or should they ban the practice altogether? 'At a time where there was significant or important non-public information swirling around Washington, the public can't help but fear that members of Congress are using their access to information to personally profit,' Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Donna Nagy, who has testified before Congress on the issue, told CNN after viewing the trading data. 'And whether that perception is true or not, it is destructive. It fuels a corrosive belief that lawmakers are using their positions for purposes of profit and not for the public interest.' Lawmakers, their spouses, and children are permitted to make trades but they are mandated to report any activity done on their behalf within 45 days. They are only required to disclose a monetary value range for trades. From March 31 — just before the president's April 2 'Liberation Day' announcement of tariffs of at least 10% across all countries — through the April 9 pause, a total of 35 lawmakers (19 Republicans and 16 Democrats) reported purchases between about $8.6 million and $27.9 million and sales between about $5.9 million and $22.4 million across 1,265 transactions. Not all of the trades were individual stocks; some involved were mutual funds or public bonds. From March 31 through April 9, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna reported the most transactions at 438, while GOP Rep. Kevin Hern reported the single highest-value transaction of up to $5 million on April 4. Eleven lawmakers reported one transaction. Fourteen lawmakers reported two transactions or fewer. The transactions Khanna reported, his communications director Sarah Drory told CNN, were not stock trades but part of a trust managed by an independent third party that stems from money his wife had before they were married. Hern spokeswoman Miranda Dabney, meanwhile, told CNN: 'Rep. Hern does not have day-to-day management or control over his stock portfolio or his businesses.' In statements provided to CNN, representatives for the lawmakers who reported trades during that period pointed to various agreements with third-party financial advisors and noted that some purchases were bonds and not individual stocks. The offices told CNN the lawmakers are not directly involved in the purchases. 'President Trump was telling the entire world for months, and even decades, about the benefits of tariffs. It was even a central component of his 2024 presidential campaign. Suggesting any behind-the-scenes coordination is ridiculous,' a spokesperson for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said, pushing back on concerns around the timing of the trades. The Georgia Republican – whose 11 reported purchases on April 8 included between $1,000 and $15,000 worth of stock each, according to the filings – does not direct her own trades but instead has a fiduciary agreement with her portfolio manager, the spokesperson said. Around Trump's trade war, a number of Republicans publicly pledged support for Trump's economic policy while protecting their own financial interests. Sen. Markwayne Mullin sold between $290,000 and $700,000 in stocks across industries from a joint account on April 8 through 'an independent, third-party operator firm that manages all stock portfolio investments on his behalf,' according to his spokesperson. At the same time, the Oklahoma Republican was publicly supporting the president's escalating trade war, despite the financial decisions that appeared to mirror broader consumer concerns. Hern, the fourth-highest ranking Republican in the House said on February 13, shortly after Trump announced 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from all countries: 'These reciprocal tariffs will incentivize other nations to level the playing field and remove long-standing, exorbitant tariffs.' On March 31 — two days before Trump announced expansive tariffs on April 2 — a trust affiliated with Hern sold between $500,000 and $1 million worth of structured investments. For Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, one of the Republicans behind the push to ban lawmaker stock trading, having an intermediary conduct the trades does little to assuage concern. 'Members of Congress should come here to advance the interests of their constituents, not to enrich themselves using stock trading,' Roy said. Rhode Island Rep. Seth Magaziner, one of the leading negotiators on the Democratic side of the effort to ban congressional stock trading who participates in regular meetings on the issue, similarly told CNN: 'We should eliminate the opportunity for members of Congress to engage in any sort of insider trading because the opportunity clearly exists.' The director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette told CNN, 'You occasionally have these moments where it really clarifies and distills down just how bad this is. And I think the tariff announcements and subsequent trades and transactions are a prime example of that.' March 3 — the day before Trump levied an additional 10% tariff on China and a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports with some exceptions — saw the highest number of lawmakers reporting stock trading in a single day through mid-April, according to CNN's analysis. Sixteen lawmakers, evenly split among Democrats and Republicans, reported hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of transactions that day — most of them purchases. The president had confirmed at an afternoon White House event on March 3 that the tariffs would take effect the next day, leading to a sharp selloff in stocks. At that point, March 3 had so far been the worst day for the market. Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, who reported purchases between $50,000 and $100,000, was the only lawmaker to report having personally traded on March 3. McCormick did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Lawmakers reached by CNN sought to distance themselves from the transactions filed during those key dates around Trump's tariffs announcements. CNN reached out to the 16 lawmakers who reported transactions on March 3, and the 35 lawmakers, some of whom overlapped, who reported having transactions between March 31 and April 9. Those who responded to CNN said they were unaware of trades being made through various agreements with financial advisors. They said the filings did not reflect traditional stock trades and that they had no interactions with the administration around key announcements. Some told CNN the filings reflected trades or reinvestments through a joint account or by a spouse. Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer is waiting on congressional approval for a blind trust, a spokesman told CNN. GOP Rep. Bruce Westerman, meanwhile, has instructed his investment advisor to not invest in individual stocks and is in the process of putting his assets back into a fund, after receiving heat for recent investments, spokesperson Kinsey Featherston shared. Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson has begun the process of divesting her stocks, managed by an independent third party, into ETFs and mutual funds upon becoming a member of Congress, her spokesperson told CNN. Some said they supported efforts to ban lawmaker trading of individual stocks, even those with active portfolios, including Khanna and GOP Rep. Rob Bresnahan. The STOCK Act passed with overwhelming support in 2012 to increase transparency about lawmaker stock trading and made it illegal for lawmakers to use inside information for financial benefit. But lawmakers and experts argue problems persist with existing reporting structures and enforcement mechanisms. Along with only being required to report a monetary range of transactions, lawmakers also don't report the timing of a trade on a given day, which could be useful context for those determining whether seemingly well-timed trades could be based on non-public information. There is also currently no designated oversight body to determine whether lawmakers hold a conflict of interest in their trading practices. Legal experts say that even lawmakers who use financial advisors to trade on their behalf are not necessarily insulated from scrutiny, and it depends on the details of the agreement. The $200 fine for late filings is hardly a deterrent, experts argue. 'That doesn't pass the sniff test even a little bit because there is no guarantee that they're not talking to those people because there is no prohibition against them from talking to those financial advisors,' Hedtler-Gaudette said of the arrangements most lawmakers have with their financial advisors. As efforts to ban congressional stock trading have fallen short, scholars and ethics experts have argued that members of Congress are privy to more information than the average American and are often faced with legislative decisions that overlap with their investment portfolios. 'It is essentially completely legal for a congressman, congresswoman or senator to go to Goldman Sachs, Blackrock or Vanguard and be like, 'Hey I'm proposing this regulation, what do you think will be the impact on the market?' There is nothing to stop you from that,' said Dr. Jan Hanousek Jr., an assistant professor at the University of Memphis who has studied the patterns of lawmaker stock trading. 'This is an insane problem.' Beyond ethics concerns, a 2022 Fox News poll found that 70% of respondents supported banning members of Congress and their families from trading stock, while a January UC San Diego study found that even when lawmakers make their trading practices public, it 'erodes' the legitimacy of Congress. The push to ban lawmaker stock trading last peaked when dozens of federal officials and some lawmakers made lucrative stock and mutual fund trades as the government was preparing for the financial onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. The Department of Justice has since closed investigations into the moves. But in a sign this Congress' bipartisan group of lawmakers may be closer to finding the political will to ban the practice, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the president himself have publicly supported the effort, following news of lawmaker stock trading activity around the tariff announcements. 'I have been working on this issue for years,' Roy told CNN. 'We can and should fix the problem during this term now that President Trump and the Speaker have signaled their support for the measure. We have the will and the mandate of the American people to do this. Let's deliver.' CNN's John Towfighi contributed to this report.


CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Professor of government has theory why Musk expressed ‘regret'
Elon Musk said Wednesday that he regrets some of his recent social media posts about President Donald Trump. Professor of government at the University of Essex Natasha Lindstaedt joins CNN Early Start to weigh in.