aka: When ‘Lock Her Up’ Texted War Plans into a Journalist’s Inbox
Ladies and gentlemen, gather ’round. Pour yourself a lukewarm cup of institutional decay, and get comfortable. Because once again, the political universe has done that thing where it folds in on itself like a dying star made of pure hypocrisy.
Let’s rewind to 2016.
Ah, the simpler times — a billionaire reality TV star was promising to drain swamps while filling his Cabinet with gold-plated alligators. And the crime of the century? Hillary Clinton’s private email server. If you were conscious during that election, you probably heard these phrases on repeat:
- “If it were anyone else, they’d be in jail.”
- “This is a gross mishandling of classified material.”
- “She’s a threat to national security!”
- Chants from the crowd: “LOCK! HER! UP!”
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Surely the people who made those claims were deeply committed to the sanctity of classified information. Surely they would hold anyone, including themselves, to that same standard.
You sweet summer child.
Let me introduce you to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the rest of Trump’s Avengers of Irony. Because just this month, they were caught — and I mean caught caught — discussing operational military plans for striking the Houthi militia in Yemen…
…in a Signal group chat.
A Signal group chat that accidentally included — and I promise you this is real — The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Who then wrote about it. In public. With quotes. And timestamps. And the kind of quiet glee that only comes from being mistaken for a CIA operative by a bunch of actual national security officials with the digital hygiene of a raccoon in a hot tub.
Let’s pause here.
Because I want to remind you what Pete Hegseth said in 2016 — and I quote:
“Any security professional… would be fired on the spot for this kind of conduct and criminally prosecuted…”
Pete, buddy. Pal. Secretary of Defense. You texted targeting information for a live military operation. In a chat. With a journalist. Who then hit publish.
It’s the same energy as screaming “YOU CAN’T LEAVE THE BACK DOOR OPEN!” while hosting a barbecue in the neighbor’s kitchen.
But Hegseth wasn’t alone in this masterclass of professional self-immolation.
- Marco Rubio, former Secretary of State and part-time finger-wagger, once told Fox: “Nobody is above the law. Not even Hillary Clinton.”
Well Marco, what happens when that group chat includes you? Or your colleagues? Is this a lock me up situation now? Asking for a country. - Tulsi Gabbard — now Director of National Intelligence — declared just last week: “Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”
…the same day she was in the Signal thread discussing bombing Yemen. That’s right — she posted about the illegality of leaks, then co-starred in one. Tulsi, blink twice if you’re trying to confess in installments. - And then there’s John Ratcliffe, CIA Director and Fox News frequent flyer, who once warned that mishandling classified information could violate the Espionage Act. The Espionage Act. That’s not a slap on the wrist — that’s death penalty territory. But when his name showed up in that chat, suddenly it’s all “Well, mistakes were made…”
Mistakes were made? Y’all accidentally group-texted a Pulitzer Prize finalist about when and where you planned to bomb a foreign militia. That’s not a mistake — that’s a Coen Brothers subplot.
Now, to be fair, when confronted, Pete Hegseth offered this airtight rebuttal:
“Nobody was texting war plans. That’s all I have to say about that.”
Which is interesting… because according to the article, you were literally the one who put targeting data into the chat. That’s like saying “Nobody robbed the bank” while holding the bag and wearing the ski mask.
And look — I’d love to believe this was just a moment of poor digital OPSEC. But when you’ve built your entire identity around high-decibel outrage over less severe infractions, you don’t get to whisper your way out of the real thing.
This is not about partisanship. It’s about accountability. If “But Her Emails” was worth years of investigations, hearings, and chants of incarceration, then texting war plans to a journalist should probably trigger at least… a Slack message from HR?
But of course, there won’t be chants. There won’t be hearings. There won’t be accountability. Because the people who screamed “Nobody is above the law” were never interested in applying that law evenly. They wanted a cudgel — and now they’re shocked that it boomerangs.
So maybe the next time someone reaches for that moral panic button — “the emails!” “the server!” “the integrity of our national security!” — we just pause and ask:
Is this about the rule of law?
Or the law of political convenience?
Because once you make hypocrisy the standard,
you’ve got no ground left to stand on when the receipts come due.
And in this case?
They texted the receipts.
To the press.
In real time.
Then it gets worse …
Just as we were wrapping up our little fireside chat about unsecured chats, performative outrage, and the karmic wheel of political hypocrisy, CBS drops a news bomb the size of a Russian diplomatic convoy.
Let’s recap.
While these senior Trump officials were actively discussing classified military targeting information in an unsecured Signal group chat — the kind of conversation that usually takes place in a SCIF, underground, guarded by Marines with flamethrowers — one of the people in the chat was… in Moscow.
Not like “on a layover.”
Not like “connecting at the airport.”
No. Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and the Middle East, was literally meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin at the same time he was part of this live war-planning chat.
Let me repeat that: While they were planning to bomb Iran-backed militias, one of the chat participants was in a country that backs those militias — in a palace with the guy who funds them.
That’s not just bad opsec. That’s “calling in the airstrike from your opponent’s living room” bad.
And we know this because open-source flight data, Russian state media, and a little ol’ thing called reality placed him in Moscow at the exact time he was added to the Signal chat.
And look — I know some of you are saying,
“Well Jon, Signal is encrypted!”
Yes, it is. But do you know what isn’t encrypted? Being in the same city as Russia’s state surveillance apparatus, carrying a phone that’s connected to a Signal chat full of targeting coordinates.
Signal may be secure.
But the Kremlin has Pegasus, zero-click exploits, and a basement full of guys named Yuri who eat end-to-end encryption for breakfast.
This isn’t about whether Signal is a good app. This is about using Signal in a place where “secure” is a punchline. Ukraine’s own cyber defense team just warned last week that Russia is actively targeting Signal accounts — sending malware from compromised contacts. So unless Steve Witkoff’s phone was blessed by St. Snowden himself, there’s a non-zero chance the Kremlin saw that chat before Jeffrey Goldberg did.
Now let’s zoom out.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton was treated like she’d sold nuclear secrets to Mars because she had a private server.
In 2025, a guy discussing real-time war plans from inside Russia gets… what, a strongly worded Slack message?
This isn’t just a double standard.
It’s a double helix of incompetence and gall.
And still, STILL, some of the people in this group are defending themselves with “well, we weren’t discussing actual war plans…”
To which I say: You named a CIA officer in the chat.
You discussed timing.
And you accidentally looped in a journalist, who is now your group historian.
So if this wasn’t a breach, what exactly would be?
Let’s just be honest: this was never about security. It was about the performance of outrage. About channeling fear and fury to win an election, and then hoping no one notices when you do the exact same thing but dumber.
Well.
We noticed.
And more importantly?
So did Vladimir Putin.