Reckless Incompetence of Signal Chat Put Servicemembers At Risk

Floor Speech

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Ms. ANSARI. Mr. Speaker, I rise with deep shock, concern, and outrage at the carelessness of the Trump administration in disclosing highly sensitive operational military plans on a commercial chat platform that included a reporter.

Without a doubt, this reckless incompetence put our servicewomen and -men in danger.

Last week, I received a call from a constituent whose son is deployed abroad in the region. His son's mission was personally put at risk by the very same people charged with safeguarding our Armed Forces who put their lives on the line for us.

This Arizona father and his son sacrifice for our country, and we should all be ashamed that this is how their service is repaid.

The Trump administration officials who set up and participated in this Signal chat debacle should have taken responsibility for their egregious mistake and instantly offered their resignation for having violated the law, contravened common sense, and put American troops in harm's way.

Let me put it this way: Not only did the National Security Advisor set up an illegal, unsecured chat with the Secretary of Defense, the CIA Director, the Vice President, and others to discuss highly, highly sensitive and imminent attack plans, but they also bungled their way into adding a random person into the chat.

We should not be surprised in the slightest that the Trump administration treats our Nation's secrets this way. This is the same man, after all, who had our nuclear codes sitting in his bathroom in Mar-a-Lago. The way that the administration has handled this entire calamity has been equally as dangerous.

Secretary of Defense Hegseth straight-up lied. He said there was no classified information on the chat, that he didn't share attack plans, and that no troops were put in harm's way.

Then, there is our Director of National Intelligence, who is supposedly our Nation's most trusted, meticulous secretkeeper, who went before the Senate to mislead, evade, and perjure herself. What a truly disgraceful episode.

This is not a partisan issue. In fact, both the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a bipartisan manner, requested that the Pentagon investigate the use of the Signal app to share classified information.

We can all agree that no government employee, let alone a Cabinet member, should be sharing classified information in a Signal chat and be careless enough to add a reporter to it, as well. There should be a serious after action review to prevent this from ever happening again and one that considers the criminality involved.

Yet another Trump lackey, our Attorney General, who is officially supposed to be the people's lawyer, is ruling out a criminal investigation into this scheme altogether.

Mr. Speaker, these are the same people that spent the better part of a decade looking into Hillary's emails. They evidently do not care to even pretend to investigate how our Nation's most secret information is being shared.

The ramifications of this unmitigated disaster will be felt for years, even decades, to come. Why would any of our allies share sensitive information with us if the Secretary of Defense is just going to pop it into a group chat and share it with the editor in chief of a national publication?

In conjunction with all of the other actions the Trump administration has taken to dismiss or turn our backs on our allies, I am deeply concerned about how Signal-gate will make us much, much less safe in the long term. Our Nation deserves better. Our servicewomen and servicemen deserve better. We deserve better.

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