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Fox News star eviscerates Trump officials' Signalgate excuses: ‘FAR MORE sensitive' than ‘war plans'
While the MAGA-boosting opinion hosts at Fox News have been fervently running defense for the Trump administration amid the Signal chat leaks scandal, several other reporters and analysts at the right-wing network have provided scathing coverage of the startling security breach.
One notable standout has been Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin, who destroyed the narrative being pushed by the White House's national security team that nothing classified was shared in the group chat and 'war plans' weren't sent out beforehand.
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg essentially called the administration's bluff on Wednesday when he published the texts sent by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the group chat that gave minute-by-minute details of an airstrike on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The messages, sent 31 minutes before the planes launched and two hours before they first hit their targets, gave a detailed timeline of the strikes and the types of weapons that would be used.
Hegseth and the White House, however, doubled down on their initial claims that no classified information was shared in the chat group — which national security adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently added Goldberg to — and insisted that the whole thing was nothing more than a 'misinformation campaign' by The Atlantic while attacking Goldberg and his wife.
Many of the president's most loyal supporters also followed suit and quickly downplayed the explosive revelation, insisting that Goldberg had 'overpromised' that Hegseth shared classified materials while echoing the administration's semantic argument that 'attack plans' are different than 'war plans.' Griffin, however, explained on Wednesday that defense experts she spoke to said that the details Hegseth shared in the unsecured chat — which included a random journalist — were 'far more sensitive' than typical 'war plans,' basically eviscerating the administration's dismissal of leaked chat.
'I surveyed a range of current and former US defense officials who agreed 'war plans' is not the right term but what was shared may have been FAR MORE sensitive given the operational details and time stamps ahead of the operation, which could have placed US military pilots in harms way,' she tweeted.
'What Hegseth shared two hours ahead of the strikes were time sensitive 'attack orders' or 'operational plans' with actual timing of the strikes and mention of F18s, MQ9 Reapers and Tomahawks,' Griffin added. 'This information is typically sent through classified channels to the commanders in the field as 'secret, no forn' message. In other words the information is 'classified' and should not be shared through insecure channels.'
A former senior defense official also told Griffin that 'attack orders' could put the military immediately at risk if leaked as it 'allows the enemy to move the target and increase lethal actions against U.S. forces.'
'This kind of real time operational information is more sensitive than 'war plans,' which makes this lapse more egregious, according to two former senior U.S. defense officials,' she continued. ''This information was clearly classified,' according to former senior defense official #1.'
Noting that the defense secretary can always retroactively declassify information, Griffin pointed out that Hegseth sharing the airstrike details in real time 'makes it unlikely to have been declassified' when Goldberg saw them in the group chat.
'According to a second former senior U.S. defense official, when Hegseth says he didn't release 'war plans' that is pure semantics. These were 'attack plans,'' she concluded. ''If you are revealing who is going to be attacked (Houthis — the name of the text chain), it still gives the enemy warning. When you release the time of the attack — all of that is always 'classified.''
Griffin also appeared on Fox News' Special Report on Wednesday evening to share some of that reporting while highlighting the fallout over the Signalgate scandal on Capitol Hill, which has even seen some Republicans push back on the White House's defiant stance. Additionally, she noted that the DoD's own manual states that the material Hegseth shared in the chat should have been classified.
It isn't just Griffin, who represents Fox News' 'hard news' division, who has been highly critical of the Trump administration amid the brewing controversy within the Murdoch media empire.
During the White House press briefing on Wednesday, correspondent Jacqui Heinrich — whom Trump recently lambasted for her tough interview of a GOP senator — grilled press secretary Karoline Leavitt over how the administration can justify its defense of Hegseth's messages. 'So, why aren't launch times on a mission strike classified?' Heinrich wondered, prompting Leavitt to brush off the question and defer to the Pentagon.
'With regard to the Signal message case, the administration is making a mess…by getting bogged down in a dispute over whether the details of Yemen bombing raids were a war plan and whether those details were, or should have been, classified,' Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume declared on Wednesday. 'All that has done is prolong the story.'
He added: 'The same goes for attacking the reporter who, through no fault or action of his own, received the Signal conversation. All attacking him did was give him a reason to release further details from the Signal chat, which appeared to contradict the administration's claim that no 'war plans' were discussed.'
In a column for the New York Post, which is owned by Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, Fox News legal analyst Andrew McCarthy called the Signal chat scandal an 'unconscionable security breach' and the administration if providing 'incredibly foolish' excused over it. McCarthy, meanwhile, was one of Trump's favorite legal experts during his New York hush money trial.
On top of that, the editorial boards of Murdoch's two top U.S. newspapers — the Post and The Wall Street Journal — published scathing op-eds on Wednesday describing Signalgate as 'security malpractice' and warned that 'Team Trump will pay a price for whistling past the Signal group-chat fiasco.'
Even some of the network's MAGA firebrands are growing exasperated with the White House's spin.
'Trying to wordsmith the hell outta this signal debacle is making it worse. It was bad,' Fox News pundit Tomi Lahren posted on Wednesday. 'And I'm honestly getting sick of the whataboutisms from my own side. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Admit the F up and move on.'
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