Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined Chris Coons (D-DE), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, in a letter to the Acting Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Department of State calling for an investigation into senior Trump administration officials for mishandling attack plans and other sensitive information through an unsecure messaging group chat, thereby putting U.S. servicemembers and intelligence officers at risk. The letter comes in response to a series of articles in The Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg detailing conversations by high-ranking Trump administration officials about military strikes conducted in Yemen in a Signal group chat in which Goldberg was included.
The letter details concerns that multiple cabinet officials potentially violated laws and regulations related to the handling of national security information and the retention of federal records, including the precise timing of missile strikes and information about intelligence gathering.
In the letter to the inspectors general, the senators expressed grave concern “over potential violations of the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act, as the article outlines policy debates between the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, and senior White House officials—discussions that should be preserved as official government records… the use of a messaging application with auto-delete functions raises further questions about whether these records were improperly destroyed.”
The senators also highlighted how a report to the Department of Justice has been yet to be filed regarding this breach, despite the legal requirement to address leaks of classified material.
“We note that classified information is designated as such because its release would significantly damage U.S. national security and put at risk our national security personnel,” the senators wrote. “As such, this information can only be shared in a sensitive compartmented facility and such operational information is classified at least the SECRET level or higher based on the Department of Defense’s own guidance. Disclosing classified information on an unsecured messaging group chat, which contained an uncleared individual, could be a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 798. We are unaware of any report to the Department of Justice associated with this event, which is a standard practice when classified information is leaked to the media.”
“This report, if accurate, indicates multiple violations of law and policy by a host of elected and confirmed officials responsible for national security issues,” the senators added. “Given that this was an accidental disclosure, it also raises the potential that the officials involved in this chat may be conducting other potentially classified and unlawful conversations on this messaging application.”
In addition to Senators Murray and Coons, the letter is signed by U.S. Senators Gary Peters, Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee; Jeanne Shaheen, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and Brian Schatz, Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS).
You can read the full text of the letter here.
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