NBC News: A DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding a reporter to a group email

The episode, which hasn’t been previously reported, raises questions about unequal punishment for inadvertent leakers in the Trump administration.

The bigwigs run interference for one another. The little people get the shaft.

It’s what happened to a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee who told colleagues she inadvertently sent unclassified details of an upcoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation to a journalist in late January, according to former ICE chief of staff Jason Houser, one former DHS official and one current DHS official. (The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they do not want to endanger their current or future career opportunities.)

But unlike Waltz and Hegseth, who both remain in their jobs, the career DHS employee was put on administrative leave and told late last week that the agency intends to revoke her security clearance, the officials said.  

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has largely rallied around Waltz and Hegseth, with Trump on Wednesday calling it “all a witch hunt.” 

A DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding a reporter to a group email

Daily Mail: Pete Hegseth unwittingly reveals controversial new tattoo

Creepy!

    The new tattoo revealed in the video features the Arabic word ‘kafir,’ which in the Quran means ‘disbeliever’ or ‘infidel’ and is inked below hegseth’s ‘Deus Vult’ tattoo. 

    The discovery sparked anger from activists who are already infuriated about his tattoos featuring Christian and American images. 

    ‘Hegseth just got a kafir (كافر) tattoo under his Deus Vult tattoo—a Crusader slogan. This isn’t just a personal choice; it’s a clear symbol of Islamophobia from the man overseeing U.S. wars,’ wrote Nerdeen Kiswani, a pro-Palestinian activist in New York City on social media. 

    Kiswani described the tattoos as the ‘normalization of Islamophobia at the highest levels of power.’ 

    Others on social media felt similarly about the tattoo.

    ‘The كافر/kafir tattoo in the Quran means disbeliever,’ wrote writer Tam Hussein on X. ‘To the Muslim world the tattoo will be seen as an open declaration of Hegseth’s enmity towards them.’

    Pete Hegseth unwittingly reveals controversial new tattoo | Daily Mail Online

    The Hill: GOP lawmakers turn up the pressure on Hegseth

    Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is under close scrutiny as Republican lawmakers criticize his handling of sensitive military information in a group chat with other administration officials that inadvertently included a journalist.

    Republican lawmakers have stopped short of calling on Hegseth to resign, but they’re warning that his decision to share sensitive details about a pending military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen over Signal, a commercial app, is a clear “strike” against him.

    And they’re wondering about Hegseth’s response to reporters’ questions, specifically his adamant denial that “nobody’s texting war plans” after a National Security Council spokesperson had confirmed the chat group’s reported texts appeared to be “authentic.”

    “The worst part of it is Hegseth saying himself, ‘This didn’t really happen.’ Why don’t you just admit it?” one Republican senator remarked.

    And while White House press secretary [Bimbo #1] Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday sought to draw a distinction between “war plans” and “attack plans” in criticizing The Atlantic’s reporting …  

    GOP lawmakers turn up the pressure on Pete Hegseth

    Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

    The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to The Atlantic’s editor in chief.

    So, about that Signal chat.

    On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

    At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

    President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

    So if it wasn’t classified, and if the Trump administration is going to openly insult them and call them liars …

    The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.

    And here it is:


    Source:

    Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

    Mediaite: Trump Just Handed His Biggest Enemy in Media a Slam Dunk

    LOL! After all that whining about Hillary Clinton’s email server!

    Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

    President Donald Trump insisted that information leaked to Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was not classified multiple times during a White House press availability Tuesday afternoon. But his defiant tone may have just backed his administration into a corner of litigious federal investigations, potentially giving one of his most prominent and influential critics a major win.

    Pro-Trump media figures have since bent over backwards to try to defend the massive security breach, which could potentially involve crimes, given the law that Trump enacted during his first administration in response to Hillary Clinton’s email server controversy.

    Trump Claims Signal Leak Not Classified Could Be Criminal

    UK Daily Mail: Trump team sparks fury with ‘sickening’ choice of emojis while describing their war plans in leaked Signal chat

    The use of emojis in a leaked Trump administration group chat discussing strikes on Houthi targets has sparked outrage, with accusations that officials made light of the sensitive topics being discussed.

    Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine, revealed on Monday that Trump’s national security advisor Michael Waltz had – seemingly inadvertently – added him to a group chat called ‘Houthi PC small group’.

    The chat appears to have served as a virtual war room for some of the President’s top team, including Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles.

    Goldberg said that Hegseth shared the war plan with the group at 11.44am eastern time on Saturday March 15, two hours before the bombs began dropping on Yemen.

    As news broke of the strikes, the journalist checked the group chat where he found a flurry of emojis and congratulations flooding the text chain.

    Waltz updated the group at 1.48pm, saying the operation had been an ‘amazing job’ before sending three emojis a few minutes later – a fist, an American flag, and fire.

    Trump team sparks fury with ‘sickening’ choice of emojis while describing their war plans in leaked Signal chat | Daily Mail Online

    New York Times: Inside Pete Hegseth’s Rocky First Months at the Pentagon

    The disclosure of battle plans on a chat app created a new predicament for the defense secretary.

    There’s nothing that can’t be cured by few stiff drinks:

    Even before he disclosed secret battle plans for Yemen in a group chat, information that could have endangered American fighter pilots, it had been a rocky two months for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

    Mr. Hegseth, a former National Guard infantryman and Fox News weekend host, started his job at the Pentagon determined to out-Trump President Trump, Defense Department officials and aides said.

    The president is skeptical about the value of NATO and European alliances, so the Pentagon under Mr. Hegseth considered plans in which the United States would give up its command role overseeing NATO troops. After Mr. Trump issued executive orders targeting transgender people, Mr. Hegseth ordered a ban on transgender troops.

    Mr. Trump has embraced Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla. The Pentagon planned a sensitive briefing to give Mr. Musk a firsthand look at how the military would fight a war with China, a potentially valuable step for any businessman with interests there.

    Inside Pete Hegseth’s Rocky First Months at the Pentagon – The New York Times

    Fox News: Fox News Analyst Floored by Hegseth’s Attempt to Deny Bombshell Leak

    Fox News political analyst Brit Hume expressed astonishment after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, his former colleague at the network, attempted to deflect a question about inadvertently leaking plans for airstrikes in Yemen.

    Hegseth was one of more than a dozen Trump administration national security officials who were added to a group chat that mistakenly included The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who revealed the government’s massive blunder in a story for the magazine.

    Noting the “shocking recklessness” of the officials, Goldberg wrote that one message sent to the group by Hegseth “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

    Goldberg, who has the same initials as U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, was mistakenly added to the group by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.

    When asked about the story by a reporter, Hegseth’s initial response was to duck the burgeoning scandal and attack Goldberg.

    Fox News Analyst Floored by Hegseth’s Attempt to Deny Bombshell Leak

    UK Daily Mail: Whose side ARE they on? Fury at US plot to ‘extort’ Europe over key global shipping route as extraordinary security bungle reveals Team Trump branding closest allies ‘pathetic freeloaders’

    MPs voiced fury today after an extraordinary security bungle revealed some of Donald Trump’s most senior team condemning Europe as ‘pathetic freeloaders’.

    A bombshell exchange on the Signal messaging app – accidentally shared with a journalist – showed an elite group including JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security advisor Mike Waltz voicing ‘loathing’ for their long-term allies.

    They also discuss how to get money out of European countries in return for US military strikes intended to stop Houthi rebels disrupting critical shipping routes in the Red Sea.

    But UK politicians said glimpse behind the scenes showed America was ‘unreliable’ and accused them of plotting ‘extortion’. One normally US-friendly MP described the situation as a ‘nightmare’ and warned Europe must ‘take it seriously and not think it’s just casual chat’. 

    Whose side ARE they on? Fury at US plot to ‘extort’ Europe over key global shipping route as extraordinary security bungle reveals Team Trump branding closest allies ‘pathetic freeloaders’ | Daily Mail Online

    Associated Press: Trump officials texted war plans to a group chat in a secure app that included a journalist

    Top national security officials for President Donald Trump, including his defense secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday. The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.”

    Goldberg said he received the Signal invitation from Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, who was also in the group chat.

    As expected, Hegseth resorts to character assassination rather than explaining the lapse in security:

    Hegseth in his first comments on the matter attacked Goldberg as “deceitful” and a “discredited so-called journalist” while alluding to previous critical reporting of Trump from the publication. He did not shed light on why Signal was being used to discuss the sensitive operation or how Goldberg ended up on the message chain.

    Trump officials text Yemen war plans to Signal group chat with journalist | AP News