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“The Answer Is Zero:” When Fragile White Supremacists Discover … They Aren’t

June 15, 2025/48 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

There’s a line in Kerry Howley’s entertaining profile of Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s incompetence that, along with the URL title — “Could these be Pete Hegseth’s last days in the Pentagon?” — made me wonder whether she and her editors rushed to publish it in fear that it was about to be Overtaken By Events.

To illustrate her best quote, describing that Whiskey Pete is only playing at Defense Secretary, Howley used the (apparently paraphrased) hypothetical crisis, Israel bombing Iran, to explain what nearly led a longtime Pentagon employee to cry when contemplating how poorly Whiskey Pete’s Pentagon would function.

“Pete is playing secretary,” a source says. “He’s not being secretary.” In crisis — an unplanned evacuation, Israel bombing Iran, China moving on Taiwan — there will be no one with experience to lead. “For any sustained operations, we’re screwed. There’s nobody in the SecDef’s office at this point that has any … they’re not heavyweights. They don’t have the sophistication. They don’t have the experience.” One source described a longtime Pentagon employee discussing the lack of readiness in the office, “close to tears,” saying “the department is so fucked.”

Having spent months crafting a great story about Trump’s woefully incompetent Defense Secretary (though before she had gotten the full story; for example, she didn’t describe the suspected role of DOGE implant Justin Fulcher in fabricating a claim about NSA intercepts), she published it before it became irrelevant.

And here we are, Israel is bombing Iran and Iran is returning fire, and there are probably people crying at the Pentagon and they’re not alone.

Israel’s attack on Iran is not even the biggest risk of having someone as unhinged as Whiskey Pete in charge: the Los Angeles invasion is.

Indeed, over the course of a long week of disastrous Congressional appearances for Whiskey Pete, it became fairly clear he knows fuckall about the invasion of California he has personally authorized. And that is dangerous — inconceivably dangerous — not least because Whiskey Pete also spent the week facing his own inadequacy.

As things (and not just Whiskey Pete’s things) begin to spiral out of control, it’s time we talk about the problems created when people who believe they — a Christian white man with an addiction problem — are supreme, face the kind of public humiliation that destroys the core of their identity.

Whiskey Pete knows fuckall about the Los Angeles deployment

Let’s start with the risk.

Friday, Reuters reported on the first known temporary detention carried out by Marines deployed to Los Angeles. As the shocking video portrays, there were at one point at least five heavily-armed men engaged in detaining Army veteran Marcus Leao.

Leao, who is brown-skinned, was a veteran on his way to the VA office.

Speaking to reporters after he was released, the civilian identified himself as Marcos Leao, 27. Leao said he was an Army veteran on his way to an office of the Department of Veterans Affairs when he crossed a yellow tape boundary and was asked to stop.

Leao, who gained his U.S. citizenship through military service, said he was treated “very fairly.”

“They’re just doing their job,” said Leao, who is of Angolan and Portuguese descent.

[snip]

The troops are authorized to detain people who pose a threat to federal personnel or property, but only until police can arrest them. Military officials are not allowed to carry out arrests themselves.

There’s no hint of what probable cause they had to detain him, at all.

He was going to the VA office.

Imagine what’s going to happen when the target is actually doing something that an itchy trigger might view as a real threat?

Meanwhile, the Secretary of Defense has repeatedly confessed he doesn’t know what is going on with the deployment.

On June 9, for example, the Secretary of Defense claimed the deployed Marines were coming from Camp Pendleton.

There was, to be fair, some as yet unexplained uncertainty whence DOD was deploying 700 Marines, from Pendleton or Twentynine Palms. But within hours of this tweet, the Marines were deploying from the latter base, not the former (where protests against the deployment had already been staged, which is on the edge of San Diego’s suburbs). The Secretary of Defense’s tweet, posted hours before the deployment, ended up being inexplicably wrong.

The next day, Whiskey Pete appeared before the first of three appropriations hearings this week. Pete Aguilar asked some basic questions: Why were the Guard sent without housing or food? How much will it cost? Where is the money coming from?

Each time, Whiskey Pete answered with bluster rather than facts (the Acting Comptroller, Bryn MacDonnell, did an exceptional job all week, and in in this case revealed the deployment would cost $134 million, mostly TDY costs, which would be paid out of contingency funds).

Then Aguilar asked Hegseth what the legal justification was. Hegseth again blustered.

Aguilar pointed to the statute: 10 USC 12406 — the statute cited in Trump’s Executive Order mandating the deployment, and asked which of the three justifications was triggered.

The Secretary of Defense said he didn’t know.

I don’t know. You just read it yourself. And people can listen themselves. But it sounds like all three to me. If you’ve got millions of illegals and you don’t know where they’re coming from, they’re waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers, that’s a problem. The government of California is unable to execute the laws of the United States. The Governor of the [sic] California has failed to protect his people along with the Mayor of Los Angeles and so President Trump has said he will protect our agents and our Guard and Marines are proud to do it.

This was the statute Hegseth had already relied on in the two memos he issued to deploy the Guard — the first dated June 7, the second dated June 9.

And yet days after deploying the Guard, Hegseth confessed that he had no fucking idea which of those three clauses justified the deployment.

Fully 15 pages of Judge Charles Breyer’s opinion enjoining the use of the National Guard addresses this issue and Breyer even scolds DOJ for attempting to retcon their justification, precisely what Hegesth himself tried to do in the hearing.

It is concerning, to say the least, to imagine that the federal executive could unilaterally exercise military force in a domestic context and then be allowed to backfill justifications for doing so, especially considering how wary courts are of after-the-fact justifications even where the stakes are lower.

Hegseth had relied on the law, without any sense of how or why (he claimed) it applied, just as Breyer found DOJ itself had done.

Hegseth had another Appropriations hearing on Wednesday, this time before the Senate. In response to a question from Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed whether the troops would use drones and detain Americans, Hegseth refused to answer.

Since then, the military has indeed deployed drones and (as noted) detained at least one American citizen. Reed was correct: The answer Hegseth refused to give was, yes.

Hegseth also stated that both the Guard and the Marines were on the streets.

Only, the Marines weren’t, yet. They hadn’t finished the scant training they were being given.

Some of these gaffes — announcing the wrong base whence Marines would deploy, claiming they were deployed when they weren’t, yet — may represent confusion or DOD changing its mind, which is interesting enough, given the artificial claim of an emergency. But Hegseth disclaimed even knowing the legal basis on which he had deployed 4,700 service members.

Whiskey Pete’s humiliation snowballs

Meanwhile, even as Hegseth is presiding over an invasion of a blue city, even as Howley’s profile was in the works, even as DOD’s Inspector General finalizes a report expected to rebut Hegseth’s claim that he didn’t share classified information on a Signal chat, on the third day of testimony (the Appropriations hearing with Aguilar was Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations hearing with Reed was Wednesday, he had a hearing before the full House Armed Services Committee on Thursday), things got worse.

Here, Democrats, and several Republicans, were far less interested in appropriations; they were teeing up on Hegseth’s manifest incompetence.

Three key exchanges went straight to Hegseth’s incompetence.

Early in the hearing, as many others did and would, Seth Moulton hammered Hegseth on his Signal scandal. As many others did and would, Moulton asked Hegseth to take some accountability for his actions.

But when Hegseth answered (as he did elsewhere) that it didn’t matter if he shared classified information in a Signal chat, that it didn’t matter because the operation itself was successful, Moulton mocked that claim.

Moulton: You talked about the success of the Houthi operation. About how much did it cost? How much money did you spend on missiles, shooting at the Houthis?

Hegseth: Well, you’d have to compare that with what it cost —

Moulton: I’m just asking how much did it cost?

Hegseth: — to divert our shipping lanes.

Moulton: I’m told it’s several hundred million dollars, maybe close to a billion dollars. How many US-flagged commercial ships have transitted the Red Sea since your so-called successful operation?

Hegseth: Well, thankfully, unlike the previous Admin —

Moulton: The answer is zero.

Hegseth: Military vessels transitt–

Moulton: No I didn’t ask you about military vessels.

Hegseth: Which would be the precursor for —

Moulton: How many commercial vessels? It has been several weeks. How many commercial vessels, US-flagged, have transitted —

Hegseth: Well, would you, Mr. Congressman, put civilian ships–

Moulton: The questions are not to me, Mr. Secretary, they’re to you. The answer is zero.

“The answer is zero.” Hegseth tried to cover up the utter pointlessness of the failed operation kicked off on that Signal chat with boasts that two military vessels had sailed through the Red Sea unscathed. But zero US commercial vehicles have, the very opportunity cost Hegseth had tried to use to dismiss the cost of the operation. That’s what success looks like for a guy like Pete Hegseth.

About halfway through the hearing, it was Mikie Sherrill’s turn, fresh off her win in the NJ gubernatorial primary. She started by observing how Hegseth had been using Fox News tactics to try to cover up his incompetence.

Mr. Secretary, your testimony over the last several days before Congress — I’ve heard you speak about all your supposed accomplishments from your time at the Pentagon. I have to say, your training at Fox News has let you spin months of dangerous dysfunction and incompetence into catchy phrases, like “restoring the warrior ethos” and “increasing lethality,” but the truth is it’s really been chaos at the Pentagon under your leadership. You’ve clearly shown you’re unable to manage the Department of Defense but what I’m most concerned about are three specific areas: Your operational incompetence, your managerial incompetence, and your budgetary incompetence.

She then walked through individual incidents substantiating those three kinds of incompetence:

Operational: How Hegseth mistakenly believed Trump wanted to cut off all aid to Ukraine. Hegseth said it was a fake news headline, a Fox News tactic.
Managerial: Why Hegseth fired CJCS CQ Brown and the Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti without cause — Sherrill said it seemed like it was because Brown is Black and Franchetti is a woman — and when Hegseth would get around to replacing Franchetti. Sherrill asked if qualified Admirals keep turning offers down. Hegseth again claimed it was fake news, but had no answer for why he hadn’t yet replaced Franchetti.
Budgetary: Why Hegseth is blowing money on vanity projects for President Trump — Sherill listed the Qatari plane, the parade, the Houthi campaign, and the Los Angeles invasion — and what priorities he has cut funding for to pay for them. Again, no asnwer.

Each time, Hegseth dodged Sherrill’s questions, and she restated the question — the last time, in a sing-song voice like she was speaking to a surly toddler.

On top of the substantive issues, the exchange proved that, yes, Hegseth is treating oversight questions like they’re Fox News games.

Eugene Vindman (Alexander’s brother, and like him ousted after blowing the whistle on Trump), almost the last questioner, chose a different approach to demonstrate Hegseth’s manifest incompetence.

He quizzed him.

He set it up by explaining that,

Many believe you are unqualified — underqualified — for this role. You’ve been Secretary of Defense for four and a half months now, for the sake of the American people and our service members, I hope you’ve done your homework since.

Then, like the questions Tammy Duckworth posed at his confirmation hearing, Vindman asked about topics that demonstrate several American vulnerabilities: China’s growing naval superiority, a key bottleneck that could cut the Baltics off from land reinforcements, and the rise of sight-directed small drones.

What year can the US fight a war with China?
How many ships does China have?
How many ships does the US have?
How many ships will China field by 2030?
What is the name of a corridor central to NATO reinforcements of the Baltic?
What heavily militarized Russian territory, connected to the Suwalki gap, containing nuclear capable missiles, it threatens all of NATO — it’s right there in the middle of Eastern Europe?
What percentage of frontline Ukrainian casualties are caused by FPV drones?
Which US service has written doctrine or standardized procurement of FPV drones?

Hegseth’s attempt to cover up his ignorance about the specifics of these vulnerabilities adopted similar tactics — those Fox News tactics Sherrill had raised — each time.

First, give a pat answer.

Then, falsely claim the answer is classified.

Then, use a political talking point answering a different question.

Then give up.

The one answer he thought he knew — that the Army had a written doctrine on FPVs — was wrong (to be fair, it was a trick question).

That’s when Vindman shifted to the same topic that Moulton had raised: Hegseth’s refusal to take accountability for placing attack information on a Signal chat. Only Vindman had a twist: He conveyed the opinion and request of the mother of one of the men who had piloted that first attack.

She believes that you need to resign. She also had several questions but one thing: she said she would appreciate an apology, an apology for putting classified information — her son couldn’t even tell her where the Truman was going — into the Houthi PC Small Group Signal chat that risked her son’s life and the mission. Mr. Secretary, yes or no, do you think you owe her an apology?

Hours after Moulton demonstrated that the mission accomplished nothing, Hegseth still resorted to the same ploy that failed with Moulton, claiming “it was an incredibly successful mission, and her son did great work, and thankfully the Houthi campaign was successful. … I don’t apologize for success.”

He doesn’t have to exercise any personal accountability because a mission that failed to achieve its stated objective was a great success.

Perhaps because the House Armed Services Committee is so big — the full hearing went on over seven hours, perhaps because a chunk of Republicans didn’t bother to show up to defend Hegseth (as noted, several joined the fun in thwacking the Secretary), perhaps it was because Whiskey Pete had no answer for his own actions, for DOD’s budget, and still, for how to keep the US safe. But the very process of the hearing showed that there’s no there there, under Hegseth’s non-stop politicization and Fox News answers.

We always knew he was an empty suit. This hearing exposed that.

Turns out you’re not supreme at all!

And that’s what has me worried.

Kerry Howley seems to think Whiskey Pete may be finished, and she’s not alone. The NBC story on the White House difficulties finding Hegseth babysitters — which is, substantively, far more damning than the Howley profile — ends with a prediction that the Inspector General will issue findings adverse to Hegseth. Two days after WSJ dedicated an entire story to that topic, it published a story describing what a failure the Houthi campaign was.

It’s not just Democrats and some Republicans in Congress who have lost patience with Hegseth. It appears most of the Pentagon has, which is why (as both Sherrill and the NBC story point out) people aren’t applying for key jobs. (Some people speculate it’s why some of the soldiers marching in yesterday’s parade couldn’t be fucked to march in lockstep.)

I’m not so sure. Politically, Trump should fire Hegseth, to minimize the surface area of easy attacks on himself, including from Republicans. Operationally, there’s no question that Hegseth’s continued tenure makes the US far less safe (and just as importantly, mucks up the finely tuned bureaucracy of the Pentagon).

Trump could even use the dud of yesterday’s military parade as an excuse. His Fox News hire couldn’t even make Trump’s long-sought military parade into rousing propaganda.

But Trump just invaded California relying on the authority of a guy who couldn’t be bothered to figure out why he was invading.

To carry out his (or Stephen Miller’s) attempt to pursue a reverse Reconstruction, he needs cabinet members like Kristi Noem and Hegseth who don’t care about the legal niceties but are happy to parrot lines about liberating the largest state, and the world’s fourth largest economy, from its elected leaders.

Without that, Trump himself, the entire project, becomes vulnerable.

If I were Hegseth I might resign on my own, to avoid any further public humiliation like I experienced this week. You had Democrats, women, Latinos (Salud Carbajal’s contempt for Hegseth was particularly scathing), Black people, and LGBT people, all looking smarter than Hegseth, hour after hour, a tremendous advertisement for the proposition that diversity is our strength, which Whiskey Pete loathes so much.

Over the course of seven hours, the contrast between the prepared members and Hegseth’s evasions dismantled Hegseth’s claims to Christian white male superiority. And that’s before he had no answer to Jason Crow’s question about what distinguishes the US from al Qaeda or ISIS.

All Hegseth had to fall back on were Fox News evasions.

It will never get better for Pete Hegseth.

Whiskey Pete will never catch up on mastery of these facts. Worse still, a masterful Howley euphemism suggests the stress of trying to do so has allowed his demons to take hold again.

Hegseth was different after Signalgate, according to six people in a position to know. He was more prone to anger and less likely to be clean-shaven in the morning.

This is a man who is failing because he came in without qualifications, quickly proved an easy mark for political infighting, and as a result keeps making decisions that threaten greater and greater catastrophe.

Whiskey Pete Hegseth has become a perfect advertisement for the lie of white supremacy. Couching your decisions in some claimed inherent superiority, over and over, doesn’t work in a bureaucracy like the Pentagon.

More importantly, for the same reasons he can’t accept accountability for Signalgate, I don’t know how Hegseth could, emotionally, quit. He can’t do so because Trump would turn on him (which Trump will eventually do anyway). He can’t do so because it would cause permanent psychic damage.

If he admits Mikie Sherrill is right, it will destroy him, because his assumed superiority is the core of his identity.

Escalation is no off-ramp

It turns out, freed from the guidance of adults counseling his decisions, that Trump is discovering he was wrong, over and over. In the weeks before Israel started what could be a catastrophic escalation, Trump was pitching what was basically the JPCOA he had overturned eight years earlier. In light of Israel’s attack, Voice of America ordered all its Farsi workers to return to work, just months after Trump ordered the entire service disbanded.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media told employees placed on administrative leave to immediately return to their roles providing counter-programming to Iranian state media as the conflict between the two nations escalated Friday, according to an email seen by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.

“Effective immediately, you are recalled from administrative leave,” said the email from USAGM’s human resources department. “You are expected to report to your duty station immediately.”

There are 75 full time employees within VOA’s Persian wing — the language predominantly spoken in Iran — and it’s believed most, if not all, have now been brought back after being put on administrative leave for three months.

In recent days, Trump discovered that Stephen Miller’s immigration jihad is too costly for powerful lobbying interests, so he is reversing course on part of that, too.

In another immigration gulag failure, Kristi Noem thought a smart way to deal with Newark’s concerns about Delaney Hall’s use as an immigration facility was to arrest Newark’s Mayor. Then they changed their mind and charged Congressman LaMonica McIver, instead. In the very same week they indicted McIver, four people (two accused of burglary, the other two accused of more violent crimes) in Delaney Hall escaped through a “drywall with a mesh interior” wall leading into a parking lot after days of unrest because GEO had repurposed the cafeteria to manage detainee movements and so not fed detainees sufficiently. Admittedly, DHS has not yet admitted that they can’t use this facility, but they certainly substantiated Newark’s concerns about its fitness to hold detainees, some of them dangerous.

The problem is, even as Trump is — with his actions — proving that the experts, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris were right after all, he cannot admit they were right, because his entire political identity is based on a claim that they’re wrong or (in the case of Black politicians) inferior.

At least in Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s case, being confronted with his incompetence only caused him to double down.

The only sign of this disastrous seven-hour hearing on Whiskey Pete’s Xitter timeline, below his pinned “Never back down” tweet, and now sandwiched among the inaccurate claim he was deploying Marines from Pendleton, an RT of a DOD Rapid Response attack showing his refusal to respond to Pete Aguilar, both a DOD Rapid Response and a Rapid Response 47 celebration of his contempt in response to questions from Ranking Appropriations member Betty McCollum about the LA deployment, eight [!!!] posts from the politicized rally at Fort Bragg (about which, Hegseth would claim in the HASC hearing, not to know DOD had imposed political litmus tests on the attendees), various false claims about Los Angeles, various false claims about US involvement in Iran, and various claims to a recruiting bonanza partly debunked in this WaPo article, the only sign of the seven hours of Whiskey Pete’s life when he was publicly and repeatedly exposed as an incompetent hack was this DOD Rapid Response attack on Sara Jacobs’ questioning of him, edited to focus on Hegseth’s response.

The full exchange is rather instructive.

Jacobs starts by noting that she represents the largest military community in the country and noting it was National Women’s Veterans Day. She sandbagged him, getting him to first reiterate his prior statements hailing the service of women. “With your focus on and emphasis on merit, standards, I wanted to tell you about three incredible women.” She then described the most recent performance evaluation of three women described as exceptional. (She didn’t name them, but they might be Erica Vandal, Emily Shilling, and Kate Cole.)

Jacobs: Given their stellar qualifications and accomplishments, and their record of surpassing standards, I assume that you agree that the Pentagon and the Services should do everything they can to retain women like these, correct?

Hegseth: I would commend the Major, the Aviator, and the Instructor for their service.

Jacobs: Great. I’m glad you agree because I also believe we should be recruiting and retaining the very best and brightest to serve in the military. And yet, you’re actually kicking out these three highly qualified solely because of their identity. These are trans women. And you are using the very same arguments used against desegregating the military or allowing women to serve or allowing gay people to serve. And in all those cases, those arguments were wrong. So I think it’s clear that this is actually not about standards or — I’m quoting you again — “an equal, unwavering, gender-neutral merit-based system,” because if it were you would be keeping these women in. Instead, you’re the one injecting culture wars into the military. And it’s at the detriment of our readiness and national security.

What DOD’s Rapid Response thought made Whiskey Pete look good was where he interrupted Jacobs’ next question, to label these women as, “Men who think they’re women.” Hegseth’s own propagandists had to censor the part where Jacobs described the excellence of trans women that Hegseth has ejected from the military, claiming they pose a threat to national security.

It was just another feeble Fox talking point, one that affirmatively buried the actual facts.

The problem with exposing the inadequacy of someone like Hegseth is the logical response — his suppression of the proof of excellence in favor of his forceful Fox redefinition of what excellence among trans servicemembers really is.

The same thing is happening with his Los Angeles invasion. Not only did Hegseth himself tweet false claims about the extent of the violence in Los Angeles, but as Gavin Newsom’s press team exposed, his Rapid Response account has started posting disinformation — old riot footage — as part of its campaign to support the Los Angeles invasion.

Pete Hegseth’s DOD is disseminating Russian-style disinformation to justify their invasion of Los Angeles (as Newsom’s staff noted, DHS has started doing the same).

Whiskey Pete’s response to being exposed as incompetent, DOD’s response to launching an invasion with no basis, has been the same: To double down on the lies, to double down on the dehumanization.

Sure, Whiskey Pete may soon be gone. Blaming him for the failed birthday party would be the easy way to do it.

But he remains particularly dangerous unless and until then, not least because he has ordered the military to be something they are not, and to do so based on his transparently false claims about what America is.

Because Pete Hegseth cannot admit who he is — and more importantly, what he is not — he is demanding that the men and women who serve under him be something they are not.

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Snake Guys: Trump’s Invasion of California Risks a Literal Firestorm in California [Updated]

June 12, 2025/51 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

In Jimmy Kimmel’s attack on Trump’s authoritarian interference in California last night, he recalled how, earlier this year, Trump claimed California had so many fires because they don’t sweep its forest floors.

It was a funny dig. Except it is also dead serious.

As laid out in California’s bid for an emergency Temporary Restraining Order filed Tuesday, among the problems with Trump’s federalization of the California National Guard is not just that Trump usurped Gavin Newsom’s authority to command the Guard and incited further unrest.

It also steals resources that California relies on to combat forest fires (and fentanyl trafficking).

Defendants’ unlawful federalization of 4,000 California National Guard members, over the repeated objections of Governor Newsom, diverts necessary state resources. See Eck Dec. ¶ 32 (noting the California Military Department has “has identified and committed 4,600 service members to achieve state specific missions, which is 38% of the available strength”); id. ¶ 33 (“In 2025, there have already been 3,332 services members activated for 89,061 duty days, indicating the state will need every available service member to meet the State’s operational needs.”). Most members of the California National Guard serve in a reserve capacity, meaning they work in civilian roles when not serving as part-time militia forces, often in specialized positions. Eck Dec. ¶¶ 21, 37. As one pertinent example, 2,500 California National Guard members were activated in response to some of the most destructive fires in Los Angeles County that occurred in early January 2025. Eck Dec. ¶¶ 35-36. Likewise, the federalized force includes elements of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team that serve in Taskforce Rattlesnake, the State’s specialized fire combat unit. Eck Dec. ¶¶ 14, 39-40. The 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team also includes Counterdrug Taskforce members that specialize in providing support to stop the trafficking of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Id. ¶¶ 15, 42-43. Members of the California National Guard also serve key roles in a variety of functions, from defending the state from cyber threats to conducting emergency traffic control. Id. ¶¶ 44-46. In short, Defendants’ federalization of the California National Guard jeopardizes vital resources on which the State depends to protect itself from emergencies, including the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team’s specialized fire suppression and drug interdiction teams. Id. ¶¶ 47-50.

In short, Defendants’ unlawful federalization of a significant subset of the California National Guard for 60 days at the expense of state resources jeopardizes the safety and welfare of the state’s citizens on two fronts: first, it removes these servicemembers from their vital roles combating drug trafficking in California’s border zones and fighting wildfires and second, their deployment risks inflaming an unstable and dangerous situation of Defendants’ own making, putting property and countless lives at unnecessary risk. See id. ¶¶ 13-16. [emphasis original]

The Deputy General Counsel in California’s Military Department, Paul Eck, described the specialized roles the Guard plays in combatting fires in a declaration accompanying the TRO request. There are 14 Task Force Rattlesnake crews that focus full-time on wildfire prevention (the kind of mitigation Trump demanded in January) and response.

38. For example, the California National Guard operates FireGuard, a wildfire satellite detection mission. During the last 18 months, FireGuard activated at least fire Emergency State Active-Duty Force Packages, consisting of 360 personnel total, in support of the Bridge Fire, Line Fire, and Park Fire in California. One hundred-forty additional Emergency State Active-Duty Military Police Soldiers were also activated to operate and augment Traffic Control Points at the Line Fire and Bridge Fire.

39. The California National Guard also operates Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, a joint taskforce with CalFire to mitigate and prevent fires through fuels mitigation projects and direct fire suppression. Task Force Rattlesnake provides 14 full-time, year-round Type I Hand Crews to reduce fuels and respond to fire incidents and other emergencies across the State. Each Task Force Rattlesnake crewmember is trained to Firefighter 1C standards, which require at least 540 hours of training. Each of California’s 14 Crews are staffed with a minimum of 22 California National Guard personnel and maintain a minimum of 22 Firefighter 1C trained crewmembers (308 personnel in total).

40. Over the past 18 months, Task Force Rattlesnake responded to at least 738 wildland firefighting response missions, covering 10,243 acres of land. [my emphasis]

Best as I can tell, those filings were submitted around 11AM on Tuesday.

Around 1:30PM, a wildfire in Apple Valley was reported. The now-4,200 acre fire is currently just 10% contained.

Having predicted that Trump’s usurpation of control over California’s National Guard might deprive the state other other emergency response resources on Tuesday, yesterday at 9AM (my screen cap is Irish time, so ET+5 and PT+8), Newsom pointed to the way Trump’s federalization of the Guard has depleted those dedicated fire response Guardsmen.

Trump’s bozo-the-clown response to the TRO request (which forgot to include its Table of Authorities and cited a Fox News story that misrepresents when Newsom and Trump spoke, all the while hiding that Trump can’t even remember when that happened) mentions fires or fireworks nine times — claiming at one point that protestors “lit fires in dumpsters and trans bins,” whatever “trans bins” are. (Whatever they are, they don’t seem like the kind of federal property to which Whiskey Pete Hegseth can assign Guardsmen and Marines.)

But Trump’s response doesn’t address how he’ll undermine efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and wildfires. Trump’s response doesn’t address how his actions will make California less safe.

In January, Trump lectured California about preventing fires; then he manufactured an emergency to steal the personnel who perform that role.

In January, Trump declared emergencies because (he claims) Mexico, Canada, and China aren’t doing enough to combat fentanyl trafficking. Then he manufactured a different emergency via which he stole some of the personnel California uses to respond to that threat.

Even on Trump’s own terms, Trump is making California less safe.

Update: Paul Eck filed an updated declaration to accompany the state’s reply. He describes over half of the specialized firefighting members.

6. Task Force Rattlesnake, California’s highly trained fire mitigation and ‘ prevention and direct fire suppression unit, lost 190 out of its total 340 members to the Title 10 federal activation. A reduction of 55.88% of California National Guard’s fire prevention and fighting force.

7. The negative impacts of the reduction in force to Task Force Rattlesnake are imminent.

8. Prior to the Title 10 Federal activation of California National Guard forces, Task Force Rattlesnake (Rattlesnake) maintained Fourteen (14) Type 1 Wildfire Handcrews. Post the mobilization, Rattlesnake has been whittled down to Nine (9) Type 1 crews.

9. The reduction in the number of Rattlesnake Type 1 crews has limited the CMD’s, and consequently Cal Fire’s, ability to conduct ground fuels reduction missions, and more importantly, it has negatively impacted CMD’s ability to respond to wildfires.

10. The consequences may be felt soon. As of June 11 there are 13 fires over 10 acres burning in California, including the Ranch Fire in San Bernardino which has consumed over 4,200 acres. If it continues to grow at its current rate of spread, it would necessitate the use of Rattlesnake. [emphasis mine]

He also described that 31% of CA’s drug interdiction team has been affected.

Docket Newsom v. Trump

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How Can Pete Hegseth Invade California without a Babysitter?

June 9, 2025/135 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Back when Whiskey Pete Hegseth had trusted advisors by his side, he launched an ill-considered escalation against the Houthis based on Stephen Miller’s vibes about Trump’s views. He shared probably-classified details, in advance, about the attack on Signal. According to WSJ, he “drew resources from efforts in Asia to deter China and pushed back maintenance schedules for carriers.” And, after several months and two F/A-18s later, he packed up, having achieved nothing, and went home.

Since then, he fired those trusted advisors. According to the Guardian, the process that led to their firing appears to have been driven by rumor spread by a guy taking them out.

The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap.

The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks.

But the advisers found the claim to be untrue and complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who had been tasked with overseeing the investigation.

[snip]

In particular, one Trump adviser recently told Hegseth that he did not think Caldwell – or any of the fired aides – had leaked anything, and that he suspected the investigation had been used to get rid of aides involved in the infighting with his first chief of staff, Joe Kasper.

[snip]

Still, the Trump advisers who reeled from the claim also eventually told Hegseth they were concerned by the optics of Parlatore, who had been close to the former chief of staff Kasper, running an investigation that targeted Kasper’s perceived enemies in the office.

Curiously, Guardian’s Hugo Lowell neglects to mention that Tim Parlatore was a Trump defense attorney — indeed, he vouched that Trump wasn’t hoarding any more classified documents — until he blabbed his mouth one day.

So that was then: Hegseth took action. Bungled that action. Fired the competent people around him.

This is now: Donald Trump just gave Whiskey Pete open-ended authority to attack US cities, in the name of protecting ICE deployments.

I hereby call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard under 10 U.S.C. 12406 to temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations. Further, I direct and delegate actions as necessary for the Secretary of Defense to coordinate with the Governors of the States and the National Guard Bureau in identifying and ordering into Federal service the appropriate members and units of the National Guard under this authority. The members and units of the National Guard called into Federal service shall be at least 2,000 National Guard personnel and the duration of duty shall be for 60 days or at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense. In addition, the Secretary of Defense may employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.

After usurping control of the California National Guard, Hegseth is also prepping a Marine deployment, just in case.

Oh, and he’s also engaged in a whole bunch of dick-wagging on Xitter, on his personal account (he hasn’t posted on his official account since Friday, making me wonder whether he lost the password or the password holder to that account).

Again, he’s doing all that without the kind of trusted advisors he had when he bolloxed the Yemen attack.

In fact, NBC describes that as he is directing an attack on a US city, the White House is attempting, but failing, to find him some babysitters.

The White House is looking for a new chief of staff and several senior advisers to support Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after a series of missteps that have shaken confidence in his leadership, but it has so far found no suitable takers, according to four current and former administration officials and a Republican congressional aide.

Top Defense Department jobs, including the defense secretary’s chief of staff, are normally considered prestigious and typically attract multiple qualified candidates. But at least three people have already turned down potential roles under Hegseth, according to a former U.S. official, the defense official and a person familiar with the matter.

[snip]

Vance and Wiles have been searching for candidates who could support Hegseth ever since, according to three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official. So far, though, the administration has not had much luck identifying people who are either willing to work for Hegseth or who fit the bill politically. And the White House has rejected some people Hegseth wants to hire, while Hegseth has rejected some of the White House’s candidates.

He is failing to do the day job — like completing a budget (though Kash Patel also failed to get his budget done on time) — of the Secretary of Defense and is primarily supported by an aide the White House doesn’t trust.

Hegseth now leans heavily on a former military aide, Ricky Buria, who retired from the military in April hoping he could serve as Hegseth’s chief of staff, a civilian position. But White House and Pentagon officials view Buria as a political novice who had reportedly been critical of Trump and Vance in private. (A Defense Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment from Buria.)

As a result, White House officials rejected Hegseth’s plan to hire Buria as his chief of staff, one of the defense officials and an administration official said. Despite that, Buria was seen with Hegseth during his recent trip to Asia in a workout video posted on social media.

[snip]

The infighting helped delay plans for “Golden Dome,” Trump’s signature missile defense program to defend the U.S. homeland, officials said. It has also contributed to the lack of a Pentagon budget, which raised frustrations among Republicans on Capitol Hill, many of whom supported Hegseth in his tight confirmation battle.

We’re getting closer and closer to the moment when the White House will have to admit what we all told it, back in January: Whiskey Pete is manifestly unfit for his job. He has neither the temperament nor the experience to do this job.

And at the moment, he doesn’t even have the aides — the White House, after several months of trying, can’t find him those aides — that, he said during his confirmation hearing, would help compensate for his lack of relevant experience.

And that’s the guy that Trump just put in charge of usurping California’s National Guard and — possibly — leading a Marine invasion of Los Angeles?

Update: Oh it gets worse!!

The guy behind the claim that NSA intercepts showed Hegseth’s reliable aides were the leakers was someone Elon implanted via DOGE at DOD. And no one cared that Forbes caught him doctoring his resume.

The adviser, Justin Fulcher, suggested to Hegseth’s then chief of staff Joe Kasper and Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, that he knew of warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) that had identified the leakers.

Fulcher offered to share the supposed evidence as long as he could help run the investigation, three of the people said. But when he sat down with agents over a week later, it became clear he had no evidence of a wiretap, and the Pentagon had been duped.

The problem was that before investigators debunked the claims by Fulcher, who was previously found to have embellished his resume, the damage was done: Trump advisers had been told by Parlatore about “smoking gun” evidence incriminating three aides, and Hegseth had already fired them.

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NYT’s Storytime on Trump’s Houthi Capitulation

May 13, 2025/19 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

NYT has a story that purports to explain, “Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia.” It’s a fantastic story, down to the detail that DOD never achieved air superiority over the Houthis.

But it is provably unreliable in at least two ways: the timeline, and the claimed involvement of Trump. Given that the story describes a clusterfuck, it does raise questions about whether there’s an even bigger clusterfuck (or Trump scandal) behind it.

Start with the timing. The entire story is premised on Trump approving a 30-day operation, and after that didn’t work, he pulled the plug.

When he approved a campaign to reopen shipping in the Red Sea by bombing the Houthi militant group into submission, President Trump wanted to see results within 30 days of the initial strikes two months ago.

By Day 31, Mr. Trump, ever leery of drawn-out military entanglements in the Middle East, demanded a progress report, according to administration officials.

But the results were not there. The United States had not even established air superiority over the Houthis. Instead, what was emerging after 30 days of a stepped-up campaign against the Yemeni group was another expensive but inconclusive American military engagement in the region.

The Houthis shot down several American MQ-9 Reaper drones and continued to fire at naval ships in the Red Sea, including an American aircraft carrier. And the U.S. strikes burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1 billion in the first month alone.

It did not help that two $67 million F/A-18 Super Hornets from America’s flagship aircraft carrier tasked with conducting strikes against the Houthis accidentally tumbled off the carrier into the sea.

By then, Mr. Trump had had enough.

[snip]

At some point, General Kurilla’s eight- to 10-month campaign was given just 30 days to show results.

In those first 30 days, the Houthis shot down seven American MQ-9 drones (around $30 million each), hampering Central Command’s ability to track and strike the militant group. Several American F-16s and an F-35 fighter jet were nearly struck by Houthi air defenses, making real the possibility of American casualties, multiple U.S. officials said.

As the timeline below lays out, this decision didn’t happen at the 31-day mark. It happened at the 51-day mark.

And the loss of the two F/A-18s both happened after the 30-day mark; indeed, at least as currently reported, the second was lost on May 6, hours after Trump announced the halt (a decision that had been made “last night“).

Even the timing of the loss of the Reaper drones is wrong. One was shot down before the first strikes, six more were shot down between then and April 23, of which three appear to have been shot down after the 30-day mark. (The Houthis have successfully targeted Reapers for longer than that.)

And look at how those problems in the timeline intersect with the agency ascribed to Trump in the story (Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan are bylined).

Word three of the story describes Trump approving the campaign.

When he approved a campaign to reopen shipping in the Red Sea by bombing the Houthi militant group into submission, President Trump wanted to see results within 30 days of the initial strikes two months ago.

By Day 31, Mr. Trump, ever leery of drawn-out military entanglements in the Middle East, demanded a progress report, according to administration officials.

But that’s not what the Signal texts released by Jeffrey Goldberg show. They show that Trump ordered the reopening of shipping lanes, but his top advisors, including Stephen Miller, were still debating how and when to do that the day of the attack.

There’s good reason to believe that Miller’s interpretation of Trump’s views served as the approval for the timing of the attack.

While the NYT story describes the other top advisors involved in all this — Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine, Centcom Commander Michael Kurilla, Steve Witkoff, JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio, and Susie Wiles, all skeptics, with the exception of Kurilla — Miller is not mentioned in the story.

Embedded between claims about Trump’s agency — Trump had had enough, Trump was ready to move on, Trump had signed off on an eight- to 10-month campaign to which he gave just 30 days to show results, Trump became the most important skeptic, Trump decided to declare the operation a success — there are actually two better substantiated explanations for the end of the campaign. First, that newly-confirmed CJCS Caine was “concerned that an extended campaign against the Houthis would drain military resources away from the Asia-Pacific region” (presumably including the USS Vinson, which Hegseth had moved from the seas off China, one of the stories for which he launched a witch hunt to ID its sources), and that Oman proposed “a perfect offramp.”

By then, Mr. Trump had had enough.

Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, who was already in Omani-mediated nuclear talks with Iran, reported that Omani officials had suggested what could be a perfect offramp for Mr. Trump on the separate issue of the Houthis, according to American and Arab officials. The United States would halt the bombing campaign and the militia would no longer target American ships in the Red Sea, but without any agreement to stop disrupting shipping that the group deemed helpful to Israel.

U.S. Central Command officials received a sudden order from the White House on May 5 to “pause” offensive operations.

[snip]

Mr. Trump has never bought into long-running military entanglements in the Middle East, and spent his first term trying to bring troops home from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

[snip]

By May 5, Mr. Trump was ready to move on, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials with knowledge of the discussions in the president’s national security circle.

[snip]

By early March, Mr. Trump had signed off on part of General Kurilla’s plan — airstrikes against Houthi air defense systems and strikes against the group’s leaders. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named the campaign Operation Rough Rider.

At some point, General Kurilla’s eight- to 10-month campaign was given just 30 days to show results.

[snip]

But Mr. Trump had become the most important skeptic.

[snip]

On Tuesday, two pilots aboard another Super Hornet, again on the Truman, were forced to eject after their fighter jet failed to catch the steel cable on the carrier deck, sending the plane into the Red Sea.

By then, Mr. Trump had decided to declare the operation a success. [my emphasis]

This casting of Trump by two Trump-whisperers as an agent that the Signal texts show he was not comes in a story that understates Trump’s first term belligerence (particularly as it pertains to ISIS) and the timing of his efforts to bring troops home.

Trump is the hero of this story, except much of that story conflicts with the timeline and known details.

Caine’s concern about withdrawing resources from China — finally, someone prioritizing the Administration’s stated goal of taking on China!! — is notable. The story doesn’t acknowledge it, but the objective of the operation — opening the shipping lanes — changed over the course of the operation to stopping the targeting of US ships, but not targeting of Israelis, much less trade between the Europeans and China about which there was so much animus expressed on the Signal chat (though, as mentioned here, the Signal chatters never actually mentioned China). Strategically, leaving China and Europe to deal with the Houthis is consistent with the trade war Trump subsequently launched. But that public discussion doesn’t appear in this story, much less admission that Trump failed to fulfill his stated objective.

Meanwhile, there are two paragraphs that describe the journalists’ sources rebutting an entirely different story (or stories).

The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the operation was always meant to be limited. “Every aspect of the campaign was coordinated at the highest levels of civilian and military leadership,” he said in an emailed statement.

A former senior official familiar with the conversations about Yemen defended Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, saying he took a coordinating role and was not pushing for any policy beyond wanting to see the president’s goal fulfilled.

One of those stories — the one Parnell, Hegseth’s propagandist, rebutted — is that the operation lacked coordination at the highest level of leadership. That story is consistent with Trump not approving the operation, which is consistent with many other details that appear in the story and also the discussion the day of the first attack about when to launch it.

The other story — from a former senior official (and so probably one of the people that either Laura Loomer, Pete Hegseth, or Trump himself has fired during this period) defending Mike Waltz — denies that Waltz was pushing a policy inconsistent with Trump’s goals. Given that Trump’s declared victory very pointedly doesn’t extend to Israel, and given the report that Trump distrusted Waltz because he coordinated with Bibi Netanyahu, and given the reports that Trump has not been coordinating with Bibi since Waltz’ departure, it’s possible that the story Waltz’ defender was trying to rebut is that he accounted for Israeli interests to an extent Trump didn’t care to.

It’s worth noting that American Oversight’s lawsuit keeps revealing additional parts to the Signal chat, so it’s possible we’ll learn more about these rebutted stories from pending FOIAs.

Anyway, it’s a nice story NYT has told and I have no doubt that the non-Trump whisperers have faithfully conveyed what their sources told them; likewise, I have no doubt that the expressed concerns of Parnell and the Waltz defender are real.

But given the clusterfuck described, it only raises questions about the real story underlying this one.

Timeline

March 15: First strikes

March 21: Redeployment of USS Vinson

April 14: 30 day mark; Dan Caine sworn in

Late April: Conference call with Hegseth, the Saudis, and Emiratis (no mention of Caine)

April 28 (day 44): Loss of first F/A-18

May 1: Trump fires Mike Waltz, in part because he coordinated closely with Bibi Netanyahu

May 5 (day 51): Order given to CentCom to “pause” offensive operations

May 6 (day 52), 12:09PM: Trump declares Houthi decision to halt attacks “last night”

May 6, 9PM local time; around 2PM DC time: Loss of second F/A-18

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Nit-picks: The White House’s Stealth April 8 Archive of “Parts” of the Houthi Signal Chat

May 8, 2025/12 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

On April 14, declarants from DOD, ODNI, CIA, and State submitted filings in American Oversight’s lawsuit regarding the Houthi Signal text that confirmed that the Signal chat had not been preserved on John Ratcliffe’s phone. As CIA’s Chief Data Officer Hurley Blankenship revealed in a declaration dated April 11,

the Director’s personal Signal account was reviewed and a screenshot of the Signal Chat at issue was captured from the Director’s account on 31 March 2025, and transferred to Agency records systems the same day. I understand that the screenshot reflects the information available at the time the screenshot was captured, which I characterized as “residual administrative content” in my initial declaration. I used that terminology because the screenshot does not include substantive messages from the Signal chat; rather, it captures the name of the chat, “Houthi PC small group”, and reflects administrative notifications from 26 March and 28 March relating to changes in participants’ administrative settings in this group chat, such as profile names and message settings.

That led American Oversight to file an amended complaint on April 21, which included both Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth’s additional known Signal use, and also complained that Marco Rubio was failing to take remedial action in his role as Acting Archivist.

Their motion for a Preliminary Injunction filed the next day used the CIA declaration to substantiate their claim that some records had been destroyed.

Some of Defendants’ Signal messages have already been lost or destroyed, see, e.g., Suppl. Blankenship Decl. ¶ 4, ECF No. 15-3, and others will be imminently destroyed in violation of the FRA without further judicial intervention. Under the FRA, “[n]o records may be ‘alienated or destroyed’” without authorization of the Archivist and unless the records “do not have ‘sufficient administrative, legal, research, or other value to warrant their continued preservation by the Government[.]’” Armstrong v. Bush, 924 F.2d 282, 285 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (quoting 44 U.S.C. § 3314). Autodelete settings are plainly inconsistent with this standard.

In a response submitted today, the government claims that American Oversight is “nit-pick[ing].”

To respond to the proof that some of the messages had been destroyed, the response reveals that the White House Counsel provided “a consolidated version of the Signal group chat.”

Plaintiff nit-picked at the adequacy of Defendants’ declarations, and after a second hearing, Defendants agreed to file supplemental declarations providing a few additional facts for certain Defendants, specified by the Court on the record, such as when searches were conducted. Defendants timely filed those supplemental declarations on April 14, ECF No. 15. Plaintiff complained about the CIA’s declaration, ECF No. 16, and Defendants filed a reply, ECF No. 20.

In addition to their own preservation efforts about which the Court ordered declarations, the defendant agencies received an email from the White House Counsel’s Office containing a consolidated version of the Signal group chat. The consolidated version was created from publicly available information and information saved from participants to the chat’s phones. The document includes content that has not been published by The Atlantic. This document is now saved in the agencies’ recordkeeping systems. See Decl. of David P. Bennett ¶ 2, Exhibit 3; Decl. of Christopher Pilkerton ¶ 8, Exhibit 4; Decl. of Robert A. Newton ¶ 3, Exhibit 5; Decl. of Mary C. Williams ¶ 5, Exhibit 6; Decl. of Mallory D. Rogoff ¶ 3, Exhibit 7.

What the response doesn’t admit is that there may be more than one consolidated chat. While Treasury, ODNI, CIA, and State all submitted declarations describing receiving a consolidated chat on April 8 — which was before the April declarations submitted by all but Treasury!! …

The U.S. Department of State received an email from the White House Counsel Office on April 8 containing a consolidated version of the Signal group chat referenced in the March 24 and 26, 2025 articles in The Atlantic, which was created for federal records purposes. The document was created based on publicly available information and information saved from participants’ phones. The document includes content that has not been published by The Atlantic. This document is now saved in FRA-compliant systems of the Department.

… DOD described receiving a consolidated chat on May 7, almost a month later.

The Department of Defense received an email from the White House Counsel’s Office on May 7, 2025, containing a consolidated version of the Signal group chat referenced in the March 24 and 26, 2025, articles in The Atlantic, which was created for federal records purposes. The document was created based on publicly available information and information saved from participants’ phones. The document includes content that has not been published by The Atlantic. This document is now saved in FRA-compliant systems within the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

That is, even for CIA, where there were clearly messages destroyed, Hurley Blankenship could have but did not claim that the consolidated set received from the White House Counsel amounted to FRA compliance. Blankenship did not write the declaration filed today; only Treasury’s Christopher Pilkerton filed all the declarations from that agency.

That kind of compartmentation suggests they’re still hiding things — like maybe how much of the chat they were unable to preserve.

And DOJ’s response stops well short of claiming that the entirety of the chat has been preserved.

Plaintiff’s irreparable harm argument is that as a FOIA requester, it faces irreparable harm as a result of the Signal chats that allegedly have been destroyed and that Plaintiff speculates will be destroyed in the future. The argument is based on Plaintiff’s assumption that significant portions of the Signal group chat have been deleted because then National Security Advisor and chat participant Michael Waltz enabled the autodelete function, and on Plaintiff’s speculation that Waltz would do so on future Signal chats initiated by his team. Mem. of Law in Supp. Pl.’s Mot. for a Prelim. Inj. at 24, ECF No. 19-1 (“Pl.’s Mem.”). But as the declarations Defendants have already submitted establish, the agencies have in fact preserved parts of the Signal group chat from Defendants’ and other participants in the Signal group chat’s phones. As the declarations submitted with this brief show, the agencies have also preserved a consolidated version of the chat that they received from the White House Counsel’s Office, which was created from publicly available information and information saved from participants to the chat’s phones. And as these declarations further attest, the document is saved in the agencies’ recordkeeping systems. [my emphasis]

The passage admits that the agencies were only able to preserve “parts of” the chat, and that they needed to rely on public information to reconstruct the “consolidated version.” They describe the consolidated version includes stuff that’s not public. But nowhere do they say the White House Counsel was able to preserve everything that was sent.

The silence on that point strongly implies they were not able to preserve everything.

Indeed, the response seems to confess that participants on the Houthi chat destroyed at least some of what Jeffrey Goldberg published, perhaps in an attempt to hide the classified information they exchanged.

Bizarrely, days after Mike Waltz was photographed sending Signal texts to (among others) Tulsi Gabbard and Marco Rubio, the response claims that firing Mike Waltz, but not Whiskey Pete and his multiple Signal threads, mitigates any harm.

Michael Waltz is no longer in the role of National Security Advisor, which further undermines any claim to irreparable harm in the future.

But it only adds to the problems. Acting Archivist Marco Rubio has been passive throughout this scandal, and assuming the “consolidated” chat received from WHCO lacks messages, it would mean Rubio, too, destroyed parts of the chat.

With each new filing, these bozos dig their hole deeper.

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Despite Pete Hegseth, Signal is Good

May 1, 2025/20 Comments/in Surveillance, Trump 2.0 /by Quinn Norton

Why you should use Signal (But maybe ditch Whatsapp?)

Pete Hegseth is Bad at His Job

The Secretary of Defense and Fox Host Pete Hegseth keeps using Signal to talk about war plans with people he’s not supposed to be talking with at his day job. He also gets caught, because he’s bad at security as well as his job. Hegseth uses his personal phone for Department of Defence business, including killing a lot Yemenis.

What Hegseth was supposed to use instead of his consumer cell phone is a SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. I’ve been in one. I was emphatically invited to leave my phone at the door. There were large men making this point to me, and I took it to heart. A SCIF is secure, but it is as much about control and legal obligations as it is about security, and rightfully so. Secure communications for a national government don’t just require security, they require accountability, integrity, and a durable record. After its classification period, that information belongs to all Americans. Historical accountability is something we’ve decided matters, and encoded into our laws.

On a technical level I wouldn’t be shocked if SCIFs use some of the same technology that’s in Signal to secure communications. It’s good stuff! But SCIFs are SCIFs, and consumer cell phones are cell phones. Your phone is not designed for government records retention, or hardened against specific nation-state threats. But modern, up-to-date phones have very good security, more hardened then most of the government systems that have ever existed. And it’s right there! In your phone without you having to do anything to get it! (Except apply new software updates when they turn up.)

So despite the fact that Hegseth’s phone would be one of the more targeted in the world, and Hegseth himself is an idiot, his phone isn’t necessarily compromised. It might be, but it’s hard to be sure. It’s quite hard to hack a modern phone, especially if the person using the phone updates it every time there’s an update released, and doesn’t click on things they don’t know are OK. There are fancy attacks, called Zero-Click Attacks, that don’t require any user interaction, but they’re hard to build and expensive.

At any given moment, you don’t know whether someone had a working attack against an up-to-date iPhone or Android until it’s discovered and patched. But mostly, the average user doesn’t have to worry about trying to secure their phone. You already secure your phone when you update it. The hackers aren’t in a race with you, or even Pete Hegseth, they’re in a race with large and well-funded security and design teams at Google and Apple — and those people are very good at their jobs. This is why the nerds (like me) always tell you to update software as soon as possible; these updates often patch security holes you never knew were there.

You’re more likely to download a vulnerability in something like Candy Crush, weird social media apps, or random productivity tools you’re tying out. But the folks at Google and Apple have your back there, too. They’ve put every app into its own software-based “container,” and don’t let apps directly interact with the core functions of your phone, or the other apps on it. Hackers try to break out of these containers, but again, it’s not easy. Even if they get a foothold in one, they might know a lot about how good you are at subway surfing, but not much else.

It’s hard out here for a phone hacker.

Sometimes the hackers hit pay dirt, and find some flaw in phone software that lets them take over the phone from the air, with no user interaction — that zero-Ccick attack. This is very scary, but also very precious for the hackers. Unless there’s a very good reason, no one is going to risk burning that bug on you. If an attack like that is found, it will be top priority for those big smart security teams at Google and Apple. There will be long nights. There will also be an update that fixes it; apply updates as soon as you see them. Once a vulnerability is patched, the malware companies have to go back to the drawing board and look for another bug they can exploit to get their revenue stream back.

The high profile malware companies often sell their software, especially if they have a zero-click attack, to governments and corporations. They don’t want normal people using it, because the more it gets used, the faster they will be back at square one after Google and Apple take their toys away.

Nerd’s Delight

Signal is usually the favorite app your exhausting nerd friend keeps badgering you to download. It’s risen to even more prominence due to Pete Hegseth’s repeated idiocy. But this has caused doubt and confusion, because if you found out what Signal was from Hegseth’s leaks and blunders, it doesn’t look so good. Using Signal for DoD high level communications is not only illegal, it is stupid. Signal isn’t meant for government classified communications.

But it is meant for you, and it’s very good at what it does.

Signal is two things: First, an app for Android and iPhone (with a handy desktop client) which encrypts chats and phone calls. That’s the Signal app you see on your phone. second, the other part is the Signal Protocol, Signal’s system of scrambling communications so that people outside of the chat can’t see or hear anything inside the chat.

Signal Protocol, the encryption system Signal uses, is a technology called a Double Ratchet. It is an amazing approach that is pretty much unbreakable in a practical sense. The very short version of how that encryption works is this: Your computer finds a special number on a curve (think of the pretty graphs in trig class) and combines this number with another number the other person has, from a different spot on another curve. These numbers are used to encrypt the messages in a way that only you both can see them. (This number generation is done by your phone and servers on the net in the background of your chat, and you never have to see any of it.) You each use the numbers from picked out these curves to encrypt a message that only the other person can read. Picking out the number from the curve is easy, but guessing it from the outside is functionally impossible. Any attempt to figure out the points on the curve you used is very hard and tiring — meaning it takes the computer a lot of energy to try. In computers, very hard always translates to expensive and slow. The extra trick in Signal’s double ratchet is a mechanism for taking that already hard number to guess and “ratcheting” it to new hard numbers – with every single message. Every Hi, Whatup, and heart emoji get this powerful encryption. Even if someone was using super computers to break into your chat (and they aren’t) every time they broke the encryption, they’d just get that message, and be back at square one.

That’s expensive, frustrating hard work, and your chats aren’t worth the bother.

The Strongest Link, Weakened?

Messenger also uses the Signal protocol

Whatsapp adopted Signal Protocol in 2014, granting encrypted privacy and safety to over a billion people.

Signal is secure. Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger use Signal protocol too, and are also secure, for now… but Meta has made some decisions that complicate things. In a rush to add AI to everything whether you want it or not, Meta has added AI to its Signal Protocol-secured chat rooms. This doesn’t break the Signal Protocol, that works fine. But to have AI in chats means that by definition, there’s another participant listening in your chat. If there wasn’t, it couldn’t reply with AI things. If you’re not comfortable with this, it might be time to ditch Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger for Signal.

I’m personally not comfortable with it, in part because as far as I can tell, there’s nothing technically or legally stopping law enforcement from demanding access to that listening function in any chat room. It may only give the police access to parts of the conversation, but I’d like the chance to defend my data myself if it comes to it. I don’t want to have it picked up from a third party without so much as notice to me.

Meta is in the the room with you, like it or not. Is it recording all your chats somewhere? I doubt it. It’s a bad idea that would make too much trouble for Meta if it got out. But I can’t know for sure. I know there’s no listener in Signal, because the protocol makes hiding a listener functionally impossible. (To be clear, Meta isn’t hiding it, they’re advertising it. But it’s still a listener.)

Encryption for All

Make no mistake, that Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger use Signal’s protocol is wonderful news. It means that, without having to know anything about internet or computer security, one day there was an update, and billions of users got to rely on some of the best encryption ever designed, without even knowing it. This is important both for keeping people safe online, and for making society better, as activists, small businesses, families, and everyone with and internet connection can talk freely and safely to their people and their communities. It doesn’t stop ill-intentioned people from doing bad and deceptive things like lie, cheat, and steal, but it makes it harder for them to enlist the computers into their schemes.

The problem with Pete Hegseth using Signal is two-fold: He has to retain records legally, and ratcheting encryption is intentionally ephemeral. Signal is the worst way to retain records, beyond perhaps toilet paper and sharpie. The second problem is that if he does have a vulnerable app on his phone, or there’s a general vulnerability the teams at Apple and Google haven’t found yet, someone could be listening into what his phone is doing. Maybe even through his Candy Crush Saga, a fun game you will never find in a SCIF, no matter how much you wish you could.

SCIFs are kind of boring. No phones, the windows are weird (to defeat directional mics) and in my case, I had to have security escort me to the bathroom. I imagine that’s why an exciting guy like Hegseth doesn’t use them. But he is not only putting people in danger with his shenanigans, he’s also robbing the American people of a record that is, by law, our right to have. And it’s looking like an era of American history in which we want to be preserving evidence.

The Online Lives of Others

If you’ve never seen the movie The Lives of Others, go watch it. It’s great, and annoyingly relevant right now.

There is another threat coming from the EU and UK that rears its head every few years, and probably from the US soon enough as well. Many governments and law enforcement agencies want, have wanted for years, a scheme digital rights advocates call Chat Control. Law enforcement would have a back door into everyone’s encryption, usually a listener, like the Meta AI, but much worse. It would bug all chats — a spook in every phone. The excuse is always CSAM, or Child Sexual Abuse Material, but the proposal is always the same – to strip every person of privacy and the technical means to protect it, in the name of protecting children. This ignores a lot of of issues that I won’t go into here, but suffice to say the argument is as dishonest as it is ineffectual.

It’s an ongoing fight pitting children against a right of privacy and personal integrity, and it always will be an ongoing fight, because it would give the police and governments nearly limitless power to spy on the entire populous all the time.

Total digital surveillance is simply not a feasible way to run a society. It is the police state the East German Stasi dreamed of having. It must be resisted for human decency and flourishing. Let’s give the totalitarian desire for a spy in every phone no oxygen, it has no decency, no matter who it claims to be protecting.

Even if you never do anything that could be of interest to governments or law enforcement, using encryption creates more freedom for all. If only “criminals” or “enemies” use Signal, then using Signal becomes a red flag. If everyone uses Signal (or Signal protocol in Whatsapp/Messenger), then it’s normal. You get the measure of protection it provides from scammers and hackers, and you help people fighting criminals and resisting tyranny, all over the world. This is one of the reasons adding Signal protocol to the Meta systems was such a great moment in the history of the net. A good portion of humanity gained a real measure of privacy that day.

If activists and people “with something to hide” are the only people using encryption like Signal, it’s grounds for suspicion. But if everyone is using it, the journalists and activists who need it for political reasons don’t stand out. The battered partners and endangered kids can find it and use it safely to get help. And everyone is safer from scams and hacking attacks — because what you do and say has some of the best protection we’ve every conceived of as a society, even if it’s just your shopping list.

Correction: A previous version of this article included a description of Diffie–Hellman key exchange in the explanation of how Signal’s encryption works. Signal changed from Diffie–Hellman to Elliptic Curve Cryptography, which is much more efficient, in 2023. I regret the error.

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Fridays with Nicole Sandler

April 25, 2025/35 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

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Whiskey Pete’s Dirty Desktop

April 25, 2025/22 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

We continue to get more details of Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s abysmal operational security.

Today, NYT revisited the issue of Pete Hegseth’s shoddy operational security, tracking all the other accounts he had registered under the phone number with which he used Signal.

Mr. Hegseth had a significant social media presence, a WhatsApp profile and a Facebook page, which he still has.

On Aug. 15, 2024, he used his personal phone number to join Sleeper.com, a fantasy football and sports betting site, using the username “PeteHegseth.” Less than two weeks later, a phone number associated with his wife, Jennifer, also joined the site. She was included in one of the two Signal chats about the strikes.

Mr. Hegseth also left other digital breadcrumbs, using his phone to register for Airbnb and Microsoft Teams, a video and communications program.

Mr. Hegseth’s number is also linked to an email address that is in turn linked to a Google Maps profile. Mr. Hegseth’s reviews on Google Maps include endorsements of a dentist (“The staff is amazing”), a plumber (“Fast, honest, and quality work”), a mural painter (“Painted 2 beautiful flags for us — spot on”) and other businesses. (Google Maps street view blurs out Mr. Hegseth’s former home.)

What they don’t say is the accessibility of his personal phone number could have made it easier to ID the IP address for the computer that (per the AP) Hegseth set up in his office so he could access Signal.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had an internet connection that bypassed the Pentagon’s security protocols set up in his office to use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer, two people familiar with the line told The Associated Press.

The existence of the unsecured internet connection is the latest revelation about Hegseth’s use of the unclassified app and raises the possibility that sensitive defense information could have been put at risk of potential hacking or surveillance.

Known as a “dirty” internet line by the IT industry, it connects directly to the public internet where the user’s information and the websites accessed do not have the same security filters or protocols that the Pentagon’s secured connections maintain.

Other Pentagon offices have used them, particularly if there’s a need to monitor information or websites that would otherwise be blocked.

But the biggest advantage of using such a line is that the user would not show up as one of the many IP addresses assigned to the Defense Department — essentially the user is masked, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with military network security.

[snip]

Hegseth initially was going to the back area of his office where he could access Wi-Fi to use his devices, one of the people familiar said, and then he requested a line at his desk where he could use his own computer.

That meant at times there were three computers around his desk — a personal computer; another for classified information; and a third for sensitive defense information, both people said.

Because electronic devices are vulnerable to spying, no one is supposed to have them inside the defense secretary’s office. Important offices at the Pentagon have a cabinet or drawer where staff or visitors are required to leave devices.

But there’s a detail that remains unexplained, one which makes this more interesting.

In addition to the texts themselves, Jeffrey Goldberg provided a number of useful details about the Houthi PC small group thread.

He included the list of the 19 people who belonged to it when he left.

We see the Principals add people (and Mike Waltz add someone believed to be Stephen Miller) along the way.

Goldberg also included metadata showing Mike Waltz setting the disappearing messages. In addition, we see Marco Rubio adding a second account for himself, “MAR added MAR.”

Rubio might have done that if he had a second device.

Given that that was all public by March 26 — which was, itself, nine days after Goldberg dropped off the list — it raises questions about why, on both March 26 and March 28 (per a CIA filing in the American Oversight lawsuit), people were fiddling with administrative settings.

I understand that the Director’s personal Signal account was reviewed and a screenshot of the Signal Chat at issue was captured from the Director’s account on 31 March 2025, and transferred to Agency records systems the same day. I understand that the screenshot reflects the information available at the time the screenshot was captured, which I characterized as “residual administrative content” in my initial declaration. I used that terminology because the screenshot does not include substantive messages from the Signal chat; rather, it captures the name of the chat, “Houthi PC small group”, and reflects administrative notifications from 26 March and 28 March relating to changes in participants’ administrative settings in this group chat, such as profile names and message settings.

That is, the only thing left on John Ratcliffe’s personal cell phone when they went to archive messages covered by the Federal Records Act was a version of the screen shot above — with the name of the chat, the dates March 26 and 28, changes in message settings (perhaps Mike Waltz trying to undo the damage of his disappearing timeline), and changes in profile names.

It’s the last bit that is most interesting. It might reflect people, in addition to the 19, who were added after Goldberg dropped off, people who were even more problematic to be included in the chat than Jeffrey Goldberg. It shouldn’t reflect people changing their own screen names; at that point, after Goldberg published, there would be no point.

But there’s also something that remains unexplained, given the new information we have.

We know from the second of three DOD declarations in the same American Oversight lawsuit that someone — the passive voice is used — did a search of Whiskey Pete’s “mobile device,” whence the “available Signal application messages that are at issue in this case have been preserved.” We know from the third declaration that a search — possibly the only one — that was conducted (the passive voice is used again) on March 27, between the day of the first admin changes reflected on Ratcliffe’s personal phone, March 26, and the day of the second administrative changes, March 28.

What we don’t have, however, is any indication how Hegseth accessed Signal via two different devices, the personal cell that was searched (passive voice) and the desktop in his office hooked up to the dirty old Internet — that is, whether he had a second account, maybe called WarFightersLoveWhiskey or just Pete, or whether he did in fact use his publicly identifiable phone number on the desktop hooked up to the dirty old Internet. That’s actually one possible explanation for the changes on March 26 and 28.

Perhaps we could answer that question by searching the device in Whiskey Pete’s office for Federal Records Act compliance?

Or maybe, as I said, there was someone added in the nine days after Goldberg left.

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Self-Reportation: Pete Hegseth’s Witch Hunt Ensnared Himself

April 21, 2025/78 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

As I wrote here, three top Pete Hegseth aides were ousted (most reports continue to use the passive voice) last week, purportedly in the witch hunt he started to look for the sources of various suspected leaks. Longtime Trump press aide John Ullyot also resigned or was asked to, depending on whom you believe.

That seems to have precipitated the exposure — first by NYT — that Whiskey Pete Hegseth had a second Signal chat, one he himself curated. Although the list, which dates back to before Hegseth’s confirmation, purports to convey administrative and scheduling details, Hegseth included roughly the same Houthi attack information that he shared on the Signal thread that included Jeffrey Goldberg.

That means he shared it with people who didn’t have a need to know — his brother and his lawyer, Tim Parlatore — and his spouse, who is not a DOD employee at all (even though she babysits him in important meetings).

[T]he information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

[snip]

Mr. Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said Mr. Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other cabinet-level officials.

Mr. Hegseth shared information about the Yemen strikes in the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat at roughly the same time he was putting the same details in the other Signal chat group that included senior U.S. officials and The Atlantic, the people familiar with Mr. Hegseth’s chat group said.

Sharing the attack details with his spouse put him at far greater exposure of willful violation of 18 USC 793, sharing National Defense Information with someone not authorized to receive it.

Of the 13 people that AP reports were in the thread, NYT identifies the following:

Hegseth
His wife Jennifer
His brother Phil
His lawyer turned DOD employee Tim Parlatore
DOD spox Sean Parnell
Chief of Staff Joe Kasper (who reportedly is moving elsewhere)
Dan Caldwell (who was also on the Goldberg list) …
And Darin Selnick, the latter two of whom were ousted in Kasper’s witch hunt last week

NYT does not say that either Colin Carroll — also fired last week — or Ullyot participated in the chat, though Ullyot was a booster during his confirmation and so by definition could have.

But everyone who participated in the chat would be witness to Hegseth sharing data he insists is not classified, but which a jury could easily find to be National Defense Information because its sharing could obviously put service members at risk. In Espionage Act cases, a jury decides whether something is NDI.

NYT implies that this thread differs from the Mike Waltz one because Hegseth used his personal device, but I’m not sure there’s any confirmation that he used a DOD device for the Waltz chat, either. (John Ratcliffe used his personal device, and Tulsi implied she had in congressional testimony; Marco Rubio had two versions of the thread and so probably two different devices).

In either case, Hegseth’s thread includes a stupid mixture of public and private, and the administrative details on the thread alone, to say nothing of the Houthi attack details, would mean the Federal Records Act covers the thread. By law Hegseth has to make copies of the thread and archive it on DOD servers.

There’s increasing reason to believe that the witch hunt Hegseth initiated on March 21 led to this place — has created and is creating more risk going forward. That is, it increasingly looks like the paranoid witch hunt that Hegseth started in March may now ensnare him personally, if no other way than making those targeted willing to share secrets they were otherwise keeping about Hegseth but now have incentive to share to exonerate themselves.

Hegseth himself tied the story directly to the firings last week at an appearance at the White House today.

You know, what a big surprise that a bunch of — a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax, won’t give back their Pulitzers…

[snip]

This is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try and slash and burn people and ruin their reputation.

But the witch hunt also intersects with the legal response to the disclosure of the original thread in important ways.

As a reminder, Kasper ordered the investigation on March 21, between the time, on March 15, that Jeffrey Goldberg concluded Mike Waltz’ Signal chat was real and so dropped off the chat, and the time, on March 24, Goldberg first disclosed it. As I laid out here, one of the stories identified among the suspected leaks — on the deployment of the USS Vinson carrier group from the East China Sea to the Red Sea — overlaps with the original Houthi thread (and so could be among the texts exchanged after Goldberg dropped off).

In any case — as this timeline makes clear — the witch hunt was in process even as two separate legal responses to the Atlantic story, an American Oversight lawsuit and an Inspector General investigation requested by both Roger Wicker and Jack Reed — kicked off.

A CIA declaration submitted in the American Oversight lawsuit, which the government has construed to apply only to the Signal chat disclosed by Goldberg, confirmed that Ratcliffe’s copy of the text thread includes none of the substantive messages but did include metadata showing there were changes to the original Signal text thread made after the first disclosures of it, on March 26 and 28. Whoever made those changes is at risk not just of violating the FRA, but also obstructing the legal processes that started after Goldberg revealed the texts.

The declarations submitted by DOD (the first, reflecting a request that Hegseth forward a copy of the chat to DOD, a second, by a more senior lawyer, noting that a search of Hegseth’s mobile device was conducted and “available Signal messages … have been preserved,” and a third, noting that the screen shots of the Signal texts were taken on March 27) have been more ambiguous. As American Oversight noted in its most recent filing,

For example, rather than specifying which messages were preserved, the Supplemental DoD Declaration vaguely references the preservation of “existing Signal application messages,” which, as shown by the Supplemental Blankenship Declaration, could be none. Suppl. Bennett Decl. ¶ 2, ECF No. 15-1.

But in any case, DOD took those screen shots on a day between changes made to the list (and the day Wicker and Reed asked DODIG to investigate), and so might reflect the first set of alterations.

CNN describes that the three men ousted last week — Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll — will be interviewed in the IG investigation, an investigation about which (CNN reports) Hegseth is increasingly concerned.

Hegseth has also grown increasingly concerned about the inspector general investigation, the sources said. Caldwell, Selnick and Carroll expect to be interviewed as part of that probe, the sources added.

That all three will be interviewed is of some interest: only Caldwell was known to be on the Waltz Signal list. If DOD’s IG has reason to interview the other two, it suggests they may already have more reason to be interested in Hegseth’s other use of Signal. But as the NYT noted, “Mr. Hegseth’s aides” (a term not necessarily limited to those on the Signal chats) advised him not to discuss operational details on that chat.

One person familiar with the chat said Mr. Hegseth’s aides had warned him a day or two before the Yemen strikes not to discuss such sensitive operational details in his Signal group chat, which, while encrypted, is not considered as secure as government channels typically used for discussing highly sensitive war planning and combat operations.

[snip]

Several of these staff members encouraged Mr. Hegseth to move the work-related matters in the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat to his government phone. But Mr. Hegseth never made the transition, according to some of the people familiar with the chat who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

I don’t rule out the possibility that Hegseth fired them all to make it impossible for Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins to subpoena the men (rather than because of the witch hunt he attributed it to). But it sounds like they’re willing to submit to voluntary interviews at this point, if for no other reason then to vindicate their innocence.

Which brings me to a point I’ve obsessed about since the beginning. The witch hunt, as laid out by Joe Kasper, was never designed to be a normal leak investigation. For those, you make a referral right away to the FBI, describing the suspected leak and providing a list of all the people known to have access to the leaked material.

Instead, this leak investigation envisioned a report for Whiskey Pete, and referrals by Kasper if he discovered leakers he wanted to face further investigation.

This investigation will commence immediately and culminate in a report to the Secretary of Defense. The report will include a complete record of unauthorized disclosures within the Department of Defense and recommendations to improve such efforts. I expect to be informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure, and that such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution

A paragraph added to CNN’s story (along with an April 4 story about which Hegseth was worried, one which could show up in Hegseth’s personal Signal list) describes that Hegseth “demanded” the FBI get involved but some of his aides dissuaded him because of the IG investigation.

Following the press reports — including one in The New York Times about the questionable success of a massive military campaign against the Houthis — Hegseth began to lash out and grew suspicious that senior military officials, as well as some of his closest advisers, were leaking to undermine him, the sources added.

At one point, Hegseth even demanded an FBI probe into the leaks — which some of his aides advised against, sources said. There was already an active inspector general investigation focusing on Hegseth, and bringing in the FBI might only invite more scrutiny, those aides advised. [my emphasis]

But this conversation should have happened before March 21, almost a week before DOD IG considered investigating. And the only reason aides would recommend against FBI involvement is if they were protecting people — perhaps themselves, perhaps those close to Hegseth, perhaps Hegseth himself — from criminal exposure.

That is, at least some of Hegseth’s aides worried that if the FBI got involved, they would discover a crime.

That’s not surprising. At least four of them witnessed Hegseth providing his wife information that a jury might decide was NDI.

Anyway, this probably is not done.

In a blockbuster op-ed claiming to support Hegseth but calling on Trump to fire him, Ullyot described things in (which decried the “horrible crisis-communications advice” offered by Parnell without naming him), “key Pentagon reporters have been telling sources privately” that, “more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week.”

With the original thread, in which Hegseth unwittingly shared information on a pending attack with someone not authorized to receive it, there are already questions about whether Hegseth destroyed communications covered by the Federal Records Act. Now, he has fired at least three people, two of whom witnessed Hegseth wittingly share the same information with, at least, his spouse, and some of whom likely told him not to do so before he did.

Having fired them under cover of a leak investigation, he may make it much clearer to American Oversight, to DOD’s Inspector General, and to Congress, that he was the leaker he was looking for from the start.

Update: American Oversight amended their complaint today, incorporating Whiskey Pete’s family Signal list.

Update: NBC seems to confirm something that appeared obvious to me: Whiskey Pete used his personal device for both the Friends and Family thread and the Waltz one.

The material Kurilla sent included details about when U.S. fighters would take off and when they would hit their targets — details that could, if they fell into the wrong hands, put the pilots of those fighters in grave danger. But he was doing exactly what he was supposed to: providing Hegseth, his superior, with information he needed to know and using a system specifically designed to safely transmit sensitive and classified information.

But then Hegseth used his personal phone to send some of the same information Kurilla had given him to at least two group text chats on the Signal messaging app, three U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the exchanges told NBC News.

The sequence of events, which has not been previously reported, could raise new questions about Hegseth’s handling of the information, which he and the government have denied was classified. In all, according to the two sources, less than 10 minutes elapsed between Kurilla’s giving Hegseth the information and Hegseth’s sending it to the two group chats, one of which included other Cabinet-level officials and their designees — and, inadvertently, the editor of The Atlantic magazine. The other group included Hegseth’s wife, his brother, his attorney and some of his aides.

Hegseth shared the information on Signal even though, NBC News has reported, an aide warned him in the days beforehand to be careful not to share sensitive information on an unsecure communications system before the Yemen strikes, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

That raises the stakes on that second DOD declaration which describes that someone (the declaration uses the passive voice) searched the device Hegseth used for the Waltz chat.

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Trump Has No Policy Process, Just Wormtongue and Palace Intrigue

April 20, 2025/75 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

The last paragraph of this NYT story describing absolutely insane plans for the State Department -“eliminating almost all of its Africa operations,” “cutting offices … that address climate change[,] refugee issues, … democracy[,] and human rights concerns,” mandating use of AI for “‘policy development and review’ and ‘operational planning’,” and replacing the Foreign Service exam with loyalty oaths — describes that the Executive Order laying out those plans is not the only proposed plan out there.

It links this story, published by NYT five days earlier, describing more modest plans: closing six embassies in Africa, not the entire continent.

The Trump administration is considering plans to close 10 embassies and 17 consulates and reduce or consolidate the staff of several other foreign missions, according to an internal State Department memo viewed by The New York Times.

The closures and other reductions outlined in the document, which is undated, would pare back the American presence on nearly every continent. They represent an expansion of plans the Trump administration was working on earlier this year for closing a dozen foreign missions and laying off local staff who work in those locations.

The cuts are in keeping with President Trump’s plans to reduce federal spending across the government, as well as a proposal that State Department leaders have been considering to cut nearly 50 percent of the department’s spending.

But the new proposed reductions have raised fresh concerns that the United States will be ceding vital diplomatic space to China, including in areas of the world where Washington has a greater presence than Beijing, compromising American national security, including intelligence gathering.

The competing plans — one a memo, the other an Executive Order that would be signed by Trump and would therefore oblige memo-writers to defer to Trump’s order — comes in the wake of the ouster of Pete Marocco, the Jan6er who effectuated the destruction of USAID, from the State Department.

There are several versions of Marocco’s ouster and his fate, but this Politico story describes that Marco Rubio fired him, in part because of differing opinions about how to destroy USAID (which has long since been accomplished, but during which, Rubio repeatedly made claims about GOP-supported programs like PEPFAR that turned out to be false).

Peter Marocco, the Trump administration official in charge of dismantling USAID, left a meeting at the White House last week to return to his office at the State Department. But when he arrived, Marocco could not enter the building: security told him he was no longer an employee there, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Word of Marocco’s firing quickly tore through the Republican Party and MAGA ecosystem, startling President Donald Trump’s loyalists who viewed the aide as part of an elite cohort of administration true believers. Loud voices on the right piled on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing him of undermining their disruptive agenda.

Yet Marocco’s abrupt termination, which has not been fully reported until now, was not an impulsive dismissal or a case of Rubio going rogue. This report was based on conversations with five people, including administration officials and allies, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. Four of the people said Rubio fired Marocco. They gave varying explanations: one administration official said Rubio and others wanted Marocco out due to what they saw as his bulldozer operating style and failure to work effectively with colleagues; others pointed to substantive disagreements between Rubio and Marocco over how to dismantle USAID. Meanwhile, Marocco allies viewed Rubio and his team as insular, controlling and obstructionist to the DOGE agenda ordered by the president.

One White House official said Rubio went to a senior White House aide for clearance to remove Marocco after tensions reached a boiling point last week. They described Marocco’s firing as “the first MAGA world killing from inside the White House.”

It also describes the backlash targeting Rubio that has resulted.

In the days since his ouster, Marocco’s MAGA allies have come to his defense and raised new suspicions of Rubio, including questions about why he would want to protect USAID and whether he’s loyal to the president.

[snip]

“He’s really not a MAGA guy, he’s a neocon,” a Trump ally said of Rubio, adding that this move “is gonna bite him.”

This is the third instance of an ugly cabinet-level dispute in the Trump Administration in recent weeks.

NYT’s account of Gary Shapley’s installment to head the IRS, without Scott Bessent’s involvement, followed by his removal at the hands of Bessent, incorporates several pieces of intrigue. First, there’s Shapley’s installment by Musk and then Bessent’s reversal of Musk’s plot.

Mr. Bessent had complained to Mr. Trump this week that Mr. Musk had done an end run around him to get Mr. Shapley installed as the interim head of the I.R.S., even though the tax collection agency reports to Mr. Bessent, the people familiar with the situation said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The clash was the latest instance of Mr. Musk’s influence in the Trump administration that has alarmed top officials. It was also the latest upheaval at the tax agency, with much of its staff pushed out or quitting. Mr. Trump earlier this week called for the I.R.S. to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the school refused to impose sweeping changes demanded by the administration.

An I.R.S. spokeswoman declined to comment on the leadership changes.

Mr. Shapley, a longtime I.R.S. agent, gained fame among conservatives after he claimed that the Justice Department had slow-walked its investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.

Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency pushed Mr. Shapley’s appointment through White House channels, but Mr. Bessent was not consulted or asked for his blessing, according to those with knowledge of the dynamic. Mr. Bessent then got Mr. Trump’s approval to unwind the decision within days, they said. Mr. Shapley had been working from the I.R.S. commissioner’s office as late as Friday morning.

Then, there’s Musk’s magnification of Laura Loomer’s attack on Bessent in response.

The feud between Mr. Musk and Mr. Bessent went public late Thursday night, when Mr. Musk amplified a social media post from the far-right researcher Laura Loomer accusing Mr. Bessent of colluding with a “Trump hater.”

“Troubling,” Mr. Musk wrote about Mr. Bessent’s meeting John Hope Bryant, the chief executive of the nonprofit Operation HOPE. Mr. Bryant is working on a financial literacy effort with Treasury officials.

Ms. Loomer had called that meeting a “vetting failure.”

Finally, there’s an oblique comment about DOGE boy Gavin Kliger’s removal on the same day as Shapley, one that WaPo describes in more detail: Kliger was shut out of IRS systems just as he was about to start a purge of IRS employees in the middle of tax season.

Early Friday morning, the IRS rescinded building and systems access for DOGE official Gavin Kliger, according to the people familiar with the situation. The Post could not immediately confirm the reason for the revocation.

Kliger was managing the massive layoffs at the agency that could cut the tax agency’s headcount by 25 percent. More layoff notices had been planned for Friday afternoon, the people said, but those notifications have been paused.

As laid out in declarations from USAID workers, Kliger left his digital fingerprints all over Marocco’s dismantling of USAID.

Left unsaid is whether Musk installed Shapley so as to empower Kliger to destroy the IRS just as it sets to processing this year’s tax receipts.

Thus far, we have correlation, without any insight into causation.

The far right targeting of Bessent is of particular concern, given the evidence he’s holding together the US (and with it, the global) economy with his own shoestrings. WSJ reported this week that he and Howard Lutnick had to sneak into the Oval Office to override Peter Navarro’s disastrous tariff plans.

On April 9, financial markets were going haywire. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wanted President Trump to put a pause on his aggressive global tariff plan. But there was a big obstacle: Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariff-loving trade adviser, who was constantly hovering around the Oval Office.

Navarro isn’t one to back down during policy debates and had stridently urged Trump to keep tariffs in place, even as corporate chieftains and other advisers urged him to relent. And Navarro had been regularly around the Oval Office since Trump’s “Liberation Day” event.

So that morning, when Navarro was scheduled to meet with economic adviser Kevin Hassett in a different part of the White House, Bessent and Lutnick made their move, according to multiple people familiar with the intervention.

They rushed to the Oval Office to see Trump and propose a pause on some of the tariffs—without Navarro there to argue or push back. They knew they had a tight window. The meeting with Bessent and Lutnick wasn’t on Trump’s schedule.

The two men convinced Trump of the strategy to pause some of the tariffs and to announce it immediately to calm the markets. They stayed until Trump tapped out a Truth Social post, which surprised Navarro, according to one of the people familiar with the episode. Bessent and press secretary Karoline Leavitt almost immediately went to the cameras outside the White House to make a public announcement.

And multiple outlets have described Bessent’s thus far successful efforts to prevent Trump from firing Jerome Powell.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly cautioned White House officials that any attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell would risk destabilizing financial markets, according to two people close to the White House granted anonymity to share details of private discussions.

Bessent’s private message reinforces what President Donald Trump already knows but comes as the president’s anger with the Fed chair is growing because Powell hasn’t shown signs that he will cut interest rates soon. It also comes against the backdrop of widespread market turmoil over the administration’s far-reaching trade war.

Trump’s fury with Powell burst into public view on Thursday morning, when he said in a post on Truth Social that his “termination cannot come fast enough!”

But Powell’s job looks safe for now.

Bessent is a mediocre Treasury Secretary, in no way the match for his counterparts. Yet he is increasingly all that’s standing between Trump and his most feverish nutjobs and far bigger financial catastrophe.

Given Loomer’s success firing NSA Director Timothy Haugh and six NSC staffers, it may be only a matter of time before the nutjobs get to Bessent, too.

The third cabinet level blowup is more opaque. As laid out here, three of Whiskey Pete Hegseth’s top aides were escorted out of the Pentagon in the wake of a leak investigation. Politico reported that they were fired — passive voice — on Friday, but the guy who led the investigation used to explain their ouster is also leaving his current role.

Joe Kasper, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s chief of staff will leave his role in the coming days for a new position at the agency, according to a senior administration official, amid a week of turmoil for the Pentagon.

Senior adviser Dan Caldwell, Hegseth deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, were placed on leave this week in an ongoing leak probe. All three were terminated on Friday, according to three people familiar with the matter, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

[snip]

Two of the people said Carroll and Selnick plan to sue for wrongful termination. The Pentagon did not respond to a request of comment.

Kasper had requested an investigation into Pentagon leaks in March, which included military operational plans for the Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea, Musk’s visit and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine.

But some at the Pentagon also started to notice a rivalry between Kasper and the fired advisers.

“Joe didn’t like those guys,” said one defense official. “They all have different styles. They just didn’t get along. It was a personality clash.”

The changes will leave Hegseth without a chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, or senior adviser in his front office.

“There is a complete meltdown in the building, and this is really reflecting on the secretary’s leadership,” said a senior defense official. “Pete Hegseth has surrounded himself with some people who don’t have his interests at heart.” [my emphasis]

Some of those targeted — who have long-standing ties to Hegseth, going back to his failed non-profit management — are denying any role in leaks.

Whatever the genesis of this upheaval or the partisan explanation for it, it leaves a wildly unqualified man at the top of the world’s largest military with no top aides.

There are other signs of the collapse of all management inside the White House — such as the White House attempt to explain away their attack on Harvard with a bullshit claim that they accidentally sent out a letter demanding to effectively take over Harvard University.

Everywhere you look you have to wonder whether Susie Wiles is as much in charge as Amy Gleason is at DOGE, whether her title of Chief of Staff is just a convenient fiction to cover up for the reality that Trump does whatever the last person in the room tells him to do.

And often as not, the last person in the room is Stephen Miller.

We’ve already seen that the three cabinet secretaries struggling to assert control over their own agencies deferred to Stephen Miller when he told the participants of the famous Signal chat what Trump thought.

That is, it’s not just that Stephen Miller is often the last one in the room with Trump. It’s not just that Stephen Miller’s policy ideas are batshit insane (and that he’s the author of Trump’s most egregious abuses of power). It’s also that Miller often stands in as the Word of DOGE, the Word of Trump.

Kremlinologists are pointing to evidence — his demotion at Trump’s most recent cabinet meeting, for example — that Elon’s power at the White House has started to wane (while ignoring that Elon has moved onto the next phase of takeover, cashing in, cashing in, and cashing in).

But behind all the intrigue, Stephen Miller’s ascendance remains, apparently uncontested and possibly unbound.

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