The media continue to focus on trivial questions such as “What is the definition of ‘classified’?” The Trump administration, with media complicity, has done a masterful job of steering discussion away from the central issue — that of posting sensitive information over unsecured platforms. I have yet to hear anyone ask either of the following questions:
- Who authorized the illegal use of Signal for sensitive conversations? That person has broken laws and should be in jail.
- Who illegally set the default of Signal to destroy the messages after a certain time? That person has broken laws and should be in jail.
A third and much more important question is the extent of other Signal communications. The media are reluctant to ask this of government officials, and the one or two attempts at it (e.g. Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs) are met with stonewalling and embarrassed dodging. That suggests that the practice is much more widespread than they are making out. In addition, the 18 players in the Signalgate leak were quite complacent and at ease with the method, as though they had used it many times, and no one raised any questions about its legality or danger.
I think it’s fair to conclude that hundreds, if not thousands of messages have been, and continue to be posted over unsecured and hackable platforms. This raises a couple of important questions or speculations.
- If the White House has been using hackable platforms, the Russians and Chinese certainly know this. If so, they have said to themselves, “Hey, we can hack that.” and they certainly have tried and succeeded. Even if they haven’t managed to hack the encryption of the Signal messages, those messages are downloaded and de-crypted into dozens of private phones, where they are fair game for hackers. (Remember the outrage at Hillary’s private server?) Consider that if even one of those 18 private phones (e.g. the guy who was in Moscow at the time) had been compromised, the entire conversation would be known to the Russians. Even Goldberg’s phone might have been tapped.
I suspect that the Russians did indeed hack that Signal chat, but they decided not to act on it, because any action would reveal how far they had penetrated the communications system.
2. If hundreds, even thousands, of sensitive conversations have been sent via Signal and intercepted by the Russians, what other top secret information do they have? They possibly know everything that has happened within the White House ambit.
Are Congressional Republicans also in on the scheme? I suspect so. They are going to extremes to stonewall questions about investigations, not just to placate King Trump, but because they themselves are guilty of crimes and of knowingly leaking sensitive information.
The media are complicit in this cover-up. I’m sure that many more brilliant and analytical minds than mine have at least entertained thoughts similar to mine. But the media are avoiding those questions like the plague. They appear to be bending the knee (just as the Washington Post, CBS, and NBC have already done) to Trump, almost as if he let it be known that they’d ‘better not go there’.
I’m not normally a conspiracy theory advocate, but this one seems to have legs. Someone – probably Trump himself — has intentionally broken laws to authorize a hackable system that has almost certainly enabled the Russians (and Chinese and others) to intercept hundreds of top secret messages. The more Trump & Co. Make absurd statements to hide this issue, the more I believe they have something really big to hide.
Finally, this clear cover-up of crimes, with its obvious lies and distractions, is damaging to my feeling about all the other events in Washington. It lends credence to my fear that many other issues — Covid origins, vaccine effectiveness, etc. — have been tainted by the government. It makes me less willing to believe anything that comes out of Washington, or from the media, who are in the thrall of Trump.
Now a strange thing has just happened. I was surprised to receive an unsolicited message that AI has added two paragraphs to the above. I will include them here, but you should realize that they are AI work and not mine.
It raises a troubling question about the integrity of our institutions and the information they provide. When trust erodes, concerned citizens like myself find it increasingly difficult to navigate the complexities of governmental narratives. It feels as though we are being gaslit, led to believe that our doubts are unfounded when, in fact, the patterns of misinformation suggest otherwise. This skepticism extends beyond just the current administration; it permeates my views on broader political discourse, complicating my ability to engage with policies that affect my daily life.
As I scrutinize everything from economic reports to health guidelines, I can’t help but wonder how much of it is influenced by political agendas rather than genuine public interest. The implications of this distrust are significant, breeding apathy and division among citizens. If we are to find a way forward, a robust dialogue that embraces accountability and transparency is essential to restore a sense of faith in our governance and the media.