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47
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Reader M.L. in Athens, OH, wrote in to tell us that the scandal name that the Internet has settled on for the Signal scandal is "Whiskeyleaks." That's pretty good, so we're going with it.
The time will come when this story fades away, likely replaced by some other outrage from the Trump administration. But that time has not come yet, and so Whiskeyleaks continues to dominate the headlines. Most notably, in a pretty clear sign that the White House will not be completely free of this headache for a very long time, Judge James Boasberg, the same guy who is dealing with the Venezuelan deportations, has ordered the administration to preserve all the messages exchanged by the Group of 18. On one hand, these folks are more than happy to look this exact Judge in the face and lie, claiming they were unable to do what he ordered. On the other hand, the key portion of the messages is already public (and who knows if Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg has more that he hasn't released). So, in this case, defiance and a risk of contempt of court might not be worth it.
Meanwhile, now that this is the scandal du jour, everyone is looking everywhere for additional angles to explore. And yesterday, enterprising journalists found at least two such angles. First, Willamette Week, a publication you've probably never heard of unless you live somewhere between Portland, OR, and Eugene, OR, noticed that one of the people who were on the text chain was Director of the National Counterterrorism Center-designate Joe Kent. Note the "designate" part of that. People who have not actually been confirmed by the Senate are not legally allowed to be seeing conversations like this until they are official. Or, until they are official officials, if you prefer.
The second bit of reporting comes from Spiegel International, which might be familiar to more readers, as it is the international arm of Der Spiegel, which is Germany's largest newsmagazine. It would seem that several key members of the text chain are not only careless about data security, they are downright incompetent in that particular area. The German reporters were able to find, via publicly available webpages and databases, cell phone numbers, personal e-mail addresses, and passwords that were used by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. It is not known if any of the information is still current, but it's recent enough that some of it (or all of it) certainly could be. If a person is not clever enough to keep their cell phone number private, then they are certainly not clever enough to develop their own security protocols in place of those developed by the pros who work for the federal government.
Undoubtedly, many Americans, and most readers of this site, would like to see the behavior on display, which was both reckless and unlawful, be punished. It is somewhat improbable that any legal wrangling, whether in the court of Boasberg or other judges, will produce anything more than embarrassment for the administration. After all, if there were going to be any criminal charges, they would have to come from AG Pam Bondi and her underlings. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
On the other hand, there is clearly a PR problem here. YouGov won the race to be the first outfit to poll Whiskeyleaks, and they found that 74% of respondents, and 60% of Republicans, think this breach is serious, or very serious. The favorability ratings of both Waltz and Hegseth are in the toilet (high 20s/low 30s), and Trump himself has gone from being a bit above water a couple of weeks ago (48% approve, 46% disapprove in the RCP aggregate) to being underwater again (47% approve, 48.8% disapprove). And the story does not appear to be running out of steam.
Trump clearly does not want to fire anyone, because doing so is tantamount to admitting a mistake, and he doesn't like to do that. On the other hand, if a price needs to be paid, somebody needs to pay it, and it isn't going to be Trump himself. Yesterday, after days of defending Waltz, the President said that while he still supports his NSA, he also blames Waltz for what happened: "I always thought it was Mike." That is the first baby step toward lopping Waltz's head off.
At the moment, there is reportedly a serious effort in the West Wing to convince Trump to push Waltz out the door. And the big problem that Waltz has, beyond having caused this scandal with his carelessness, is that Goldberg's number was on his phone. Trump loathes Goldberg, as he was the one who first wrote the story about Trump calling America's war dead "suckers" and "losers." Waltz needs to come up with an explanation for why he had Goldberg's number, and how it was accessible enough that it could be accidentally added to the text chain. Thus far, all the NSA has come up with is that it must have been one of his staff who was responsible. Uh, huh.
If Trump becomes fixated on the PR damage here, and on the "betrayal" involved in having Goldberg's number, Waltz really could be in trouble here. It would probably help seal the deal if the folks lobbying Trump were to observe that if Waltz managed to screw up this badly in just 2 months on the job, he's sure to do it again if he remains a part of the administration. (Z)