One high-ranking House Democrat recently shared his own theory as to why he believes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chose to share sensitive details on a group text thread using the encrypted messaging app Signal.
The Hill reported Tuesday that Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), who has been in Congress since he was first elected in 2008, thinks Hegseth may have felt compelled to disclose what is normally highly classified information to a group of senior-level officials in President Donald Trump's administration due to his own "personal inadequacies." Garamendi told NewsNation's Laura Ingle that the former Fox News part-time weekend host may have seen the sharing of mission details as an opportunity to look tough.
"What in the hell are you guys doing? And why are you doing that on a commercial chat platform? Makes absolutely no sense. And it’s, in fact, extraordinarily dangerous," Garamendi said. "And then you bring in the Secretary of Defense — and perhaps for his own personal inadequacies for the job — he decides that he’s got to show that he’s got the really big, important stuff that he can then share with the other teenagers that are chatting about this."
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"It’s like the top national security secretaries and others that are at the top of the national security program kind of got together like a bunch of teenagers talking things over about the school dance and the football game," the California Democrat added.
Garamendi's comments come as the Trump administration is embroiled in an ongoing scandal in which National Security Advisor Mike Waltz inadvertently invited Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal thread. Goldberg wrote that he wasn't sure if he was being deliberately targeted in a misinformation campaign until he cross-referenced Hegseth's comments about when and where airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen were occurring with live reports from those areas.
During an MSNBC interview on Monday night, Goldberg noted that Hegseth shared highly sensitive details that are normally considered highly classified in order to safeguard the lives of U.S. military servicemen and women carrying out those missions. This reportedly included the time and location of strikes, weapons systems and who was being targeted, among other war plans. The Atlantic journalist also said he was shocked that CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who was one of 18 people on the thread, apparently revealed the name of an active CIA covert operative.
When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in the midst of her own scandal regarding her use of a private email server, Hegseth said at the time that anyone who mishandles classified information should be "fired on the spot." Other officials who were on the group text thread had made similar comments about Clinton in 2016. Among some of the officials on the group text thread were Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, among others.
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Click here to read the Hill's full article.