Trump intel officials are reduced to a shuck and jive routine as they come under intense grilling from Senate Democrats about Signalgate leak scandal

Trump intel team faces grilling on leak case from Senate Democrats

 

Senate Democrats yesterday aggressively questioned Trump officials who were involved in the Signalgate leak of sensitive information about U.S.  military operations in Yemen, noting this represents a  pattern of recklessly handling classified information by the current administration. That's from a report at Axios under the headline "Senate Dems blast 'incompetent' Trump officials over Signal leak." Stephen Neukam and Kathleen Hunter report:

Senate Democrats confronted top Trump officials about the alleged leak of a highly sensitive Signal chat detailing plans for airstrikes in Yemen, with the ranking member of the Intelligence panel blasting it as "mind-boggling."

Why it matters: Democrats are arguing that the Signal fiasco reveals widespread mismanagement of classified information under the Trump administration — a message they sought to drive home during an Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday.

• Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Intelligence panel Democrat, pressed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe to confirm whether they were, in fact, participants in the Signal chat in question.
• "So you were the John Ratcliffe on that chat?" Warner asked Ratcliffe, who responded, "I was." Gabbard declined to comment on whether she participated.
• She and Ratcliffe both asserted that no classified information was shared.

Senate Democrats seemed to be skeptical of that claim, in part, because it differed from the account of Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic editor who accidentally was included in the chat. Neukam and Hunter write:

Driving the news: Warner set the tone for Democrats in his opening remarks, calling the alleged leak "mind-boggling" and just "one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly toward classified information."

• Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said there "ought to be resignations, starting with the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense."
• President Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally invited the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to a group text in which top officials debated highly sensitive plans for bombing Yemen, the magazine reported Monday."

Between the lines: Gabbard and Ratcliffe said there was no discussion about specific targets and weapons systems in the Signal chat, refuting a core part of the story from The Atlantic.

• Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, suggested he may release all of the texts he viewed in the Signal chat during an interview with The Bulwark on Tuesday. Goldberg did, in fact, publish an article this morning, including full details of the chat.
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday disputed The Atlantic's report, and called Goldberg a "deceitful and highly discredited so-called 'journalist' who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again."

• That's even as the White House National Security Council confirmed Monday that the group text mistakenly revealed to Goldberg "appears to be authentic."

Zoom in: Democrats on Tuesday pressed Gabbard and Ratcliffe on how Goldberg ended up on the chat, why he wasn't removed, and why they think no classified information was shared.

• "I'm shocked to find him on a thread that he's reading in the parking lot of a grocery store in Washington, D.C.," Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said.

What to watch: Democrats vowed to gain access to the full transcript of the Signal chat shared with Goldberg and to compare it with Gabbard and Ratcliffe's testimony.