SIGNAL-GATE — THE REAL QUESTION

I’m quite amused to watch the Trump team squirm to lie, downplay, cast blame, etc., to get off the hook for the egregious leak of secret information. The media are going berserk painting the administration as a bunch of incompetent bumblers.

However, the Trump team is craftier than that. They have managed to focus the inquiry on two questions:

1. How did Goldberg’s name get added to that list?, and
2. Was the leaked information classified?

The media have taken the bait, and they devote their whole time to those questions. Trump may be successful in framing the issue as one of incompetence. They are relatively safe in assuming that no one will find out how Goldberg’s name was added. As for classification, no one formally ‘classified’ the data. Even in the case of including the name of a secret CIA operative, no one actually declared this information as ‘classified’. So the media go round and round seeking answers to the two questions, without ever getting a satisfying answer.

I suspect that the end result will be the firing of Waltz. That will dismiss the whole incident as an innocent case of inadvertent neglect, and the whole story will disappear from the news cycle.

No, all this is a distraction from the real issue, which I am not hearing: what were all these top-ranked people doing discussing sensitive information over an unsecured line, on their private phones, that could be hacked? All these people were well aware that using an unsecured line is illegal. It is doubly illegal when they willfully alter Signal’s default of preserving messages, to delete the messages, as law requires that messages be retained.  This is not incompetence; it is a planned effort to break the law and go around the ultra-secure government system.

No one in that room questioned the use of an unsecured line. Indeed, they were complacent and comfortable using it, as though they were quite used to the method. This suggests that many other chats and messages are sent through unsecured means. In fact, maybe ALL White House communication is done through unsecured means. This needs to be investigated, but I think I know what the answer will be.

If all or most of the White House messages are unsecured, then Trump must be aware of the fact, and in fact he must use those unsecured lines himself, which means that he must have approved of the method, and probably ordered that Signal be used.

Now why would Trump approve or even order the White House staff to use (illegally) lines that are hackable on private phones, as opposed to the secure government procedure? The prima facie answer is that Trump wants someone to hack the messages. And who might that ‘someone’ be? Well, Putin is the first name that comes to mind.

I’m suggesting that it is at least possible that Trump ordered White House staff to use an illegal system that Putin could hack into, giving Putin access to all secret conversations at the White House. How about members of Congress? Or the Pentagon? Do they all use Signal, as ordered by Trump? Is it possible that Putin knows all our military secrets? The loyal cronies, all of whom are aware of what is going on and how illegal is, won’t dare blow the whistle. Indeed, they are safe because they were ordered by the President to break the law, and the President cannot be prosecuted. (Reminds me a bit of Nazi prison guards.)

All this speculation is outrageously monstrous, but I feel that the rabbit hole is pointing in that direction. That is why the Trump team is going to such lengths to focus on the questions of Goldberg and classification, in order to avoid some really serious and intentional breaking of the law. If my suggestions are even 1/10^th true, then Hillary’s emails, the Mar-a-Lago documents, and the addition of Goldberg to the list, pale into insignificance.

One final question: if it is shown that Trump is indeed enabling Putin to access all our secret data, will his MAGA cultist cronies still support this criminal behavior? All indications are that they will allow this to continue.