CNN aired a montage of Trump officials embroiled in the Signal chat saga repeatedly condemning former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server while in office.
White House National Security adviser Mike Waltz appeared to have mistakenly invited The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeff Goldberg to an encrypted chat called the “Houthi PC small group” that included top officials and cabinet officials to discuss highly classified information about an impending U.S. strike in Yemen.
Just hours after the news broke on Monday, CNN’s The Source shared a montage of current Trump administration officials who had repeatedly railed against Clinton for not using proper government channels to send details on classified material while she was Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013.
“If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they’d be in jail right now,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a resurfaced Fox News clip from 2016.
“Nobody is above the law,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said on Fox News in 2016. “Not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is.”
“Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Fox News in 2019.
“When you have the [Hillary] Clinton emails… On top of the fact that the sitting president of the United States (Donald Trump) admitted he had documents in his garage… They didn’t prosecute they didn’t go after these folks,” Waltz, who added Golberg to the Signal chat, told CNN in 2023.
Just hours after reports surfaced, Clinton took to X to issue a seven-word response.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Clinton tweeted, along with a screenshot of The Atlantic’s report.
In 2016, then-FBI director James Comey found evidence that Clinton was “extremely careless” in using a private server to send hundreds of classified emails – but that her actions were not deemed severe enough to warrant an indictment. The revelations derailed her 2016 presidential campaign as the Democratic Party’s nominee, leading to Trump’s repeated promises to “lock her up.”
Vice President JD Vance, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator, Steve Witkoff, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, were among others who appeared to be included in the channel.
Waltz, a former Green Beret and Florida representative, used Signal, a common encrypted messaging app, to form the group chat with colleagues on the National Security Council’s “Principals Committee.” Signal is not an official communications channel available to top government officials.
In an explosive report, Goldberg revealed how he unwittingly was able to get front row seats as Trump’s team began outlining their plans to bomb the Houthis in Yemen earlier this month. No one managed to spot the interloper in the chat, even when Goldberg left the chat – which would have notified members.
In the chat, Vance appeared to disagree with Trump wisdom on the strikes, noting: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.”
The vice president and defense secretary also shared their disdan for whag Hegseth called “European free-loading.”
When probed by a reporter in the Oval Office on Monday, President Donald Trump said he didn’t know “anything about” the story.
“You are telling me about it for the first time,” he added.
Hegseth told reporters later on Monday that “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
