President Donald Trump

Paging BJ and/or playbig for their takes on this

Keep the laughs coming folks

Its kind of arbitrary on the edge cases.

If they say the chat was unclassified and the transcript shows they talked about F-18s firing lrasms at houthi ships off the coast of yemen monday morning then they are pretty cooked.

thats an example specifically called out as "top secret"

Lesser examples are still considered secret

https://sgp.fas.org/library/quist2/chap_...

I know trump can declassify at will though, doesn't the same apply to secretaries to matters of their own competence? so like the secretary of defense can tell anyone whatever he wants about defense unless the president ordered otherwise and that automatically makes it a legal disclosure? not sure if it works for secretaries though but I gather that's how it works for the president

The idea that things can become declassified merely by virtue of the president or anyone else thinking something in his own head is a myth invented by Trump.

No. He can order something declassified and then it goes through a process.

ah ok

Well, if it has been declassified then they can show the proper review and order for its declassification, stamped prior to the Signal chat of course. They should also provide provide the records of what was actually said. After all, you would have to know what you said to know that it was not classified.

If it was really unclassified and declassified in an orderly manner, this should be trivial.

Of course, they will do no such thing, because it was obviously classified. Classification errs on the side of caution in the military. For a ship in active duty the inventory of hand wash is is more than likely classified, let alone flight plans and attack plans.

The more pertinent question is that the lax nature of this chat is tells us very clearly that this is not the first time this has happened. There were no raised eyebrows. And if they are doing this on unsecured devices whose security is at the whim of idiots who pull stunts like this, you have to assume they have been compromised. How much have potentially been leaked to adversaries, enemies or other parties?

Trump himself has to be amazed at what kind of horseshit he can say and have his supporters drink it up like ambrosia.

The president is seemingly at will but there is a specific process to declassify information and its not director discretion.

There hasn't really been a challenge of that presidential power because considering declassifying information to avoid accountability is objectively counter to national security and no other president would consider it

There really isn't anything with teeth holding the president accountable on this, unfortunately

https://www.justsecurity.org/86777/dispelling-myths-how-classification-and-declassification-actually-work/

Just Security

Dispelling Myths: How Classification and Declassification Actually Work

he might have invented it but tbh I read it used from the left to defend Biden as well during the investigation on his purported holding of classified documents so I thought if both sides claimed that, it was true.

but I accept it isn't

Its kind of shocking how much of our system predicates on the elected president not actively being antagonistic towards decorum and the broader government

let's say they made it abundantly clear it wasn't n-th dimensions chess
/

Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number?” Waltz told Ingraham. When she asked again how he ended up on Waltz’s phone, Waltz again denied knowing.

“Of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else,” Waltz added. “The person I thought was on there was never on there.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/25...

Talking with Leon and saying ‘We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how someone could have added somebody into a group chat’ is probably the most Trumpy shit I could ever read

Grunging but has anyone already posted Hegseth’s quotes while a Fox News pundit during the butteremails era? Cuz those are breathtaking quotes

So, they’re gonna go with “We wuz hacked…but also it wasn’t that bad anyways cause it wasn’t really secret…but you can’t see what we said… also that reporter should be strung up for sharing it”.

Thing is, it’ll work.

It absolutely will

The right will eat this shit up as some nothing-burger that the reporter should be accused of treason for even sharing

The left will be too feckless to do a god damn thing other than wring their fists and cry shame

And on and on we’ll go

I don't recall anyone using that defense for Biden, but if they did, they were wrong.

Not just Hegseth...

It’s ok .
Rules, punishments and accountability are applicable to everyone except for maga people ~> true freedom.
It’s surely written in the constitution!
We can count on luciom to find it for us .

Intel services all around the world in shambles at the moment.
World knew you cannot trust america but this is beyond terrifying if you are in joint operations.

I guess allies have been adjusting a long time ago though.

Why doesn’t the journalist just release all the texts if they are classified as he claims . If he is charged he can use the defense secretary’s own words they were not classified

Or is it possible it wasn’t classified?

Definitely a massive mistake adding the journalist to the text message can’t fathom how that happens

It’shappening.gif

They were prob worried that WH would, I dunno, charge them with a crime of some sort if they did that.

But then they didn’t and WH slagged them and said they were going to investigate them, and that NOTHING IS CLASSIFIED anyways. So **** is out.

As to how it happened - Elon is working on it as we speak!

Seems detailed.

Classified? Dunno, depends on what was on Trumps head at the time right? Although he said he had no idea this happened already…