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Senate Democrats at Tuesday’s Intelligence Committee hearing were operating partly in the dark when they questioned officials about the Trump administration's latest scandal. Senators at the time did not have the full transcript of the group chat in which top officials inadvertently shared military secrets with a journalist hours before the United States carried out bombings in Yemen.
So the senators weren’t in much of a position to scrutinize the claims — made by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who were part of that group chat (along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Mike Waltz) — that none of the information exchanged in the chat was classified. (A claim that has been echoed by the White House.)
But then The Atlantic published the contents of that Signal chat Wednesday morning, ahead of a similar hearing in the House. And that information gave Democrats the opportunity to press intelligence officials, again including Gabbard and Ratcliffe, on the security failure and to call for Hegseth’s resignation.
“A lot of this suggests sort of a lack of sobriety,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut said of Hegseth’s use of emojis in several of his posts to the chat. “When there’s punch emojis and fire emojis, it’s a lack of sobriety. I don’t mean that literally.” (Himes’ aside at the end is an apparent jab at Hegseth’s alleged history of alcohol abuse, which the secretary has denied.)
Elsewhere, in response to questions about whether classified material was in the chat, Hegseth told reporters, “Nobody’s texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s social media post was typical of the Democratic response to that:
In demanding Hegseth’s resignation, House Democrats at the hearing pointed to his Signal messages to highlight the sensitivity of the military plans he was discussing on a commercial messaging platform.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., sounded exasperated as he tried to get Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to say the details Hegseth shared were classified. “This is classified information,” the representative interjected after Kruse attempted to deflect. Krishnamoorthi said Hegseth “needs to resign immediately and a full investigation needs to be undertaken with regard to whether other Signal chats are occurring in this administration.”
Watch below:
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., brought in a large printout of Hegseth’s messages to prove the secretary was discussing details of an imminent attack by the U.S. Crow also showed images of anti-aircraft missiles the Houthis have at their disposal to illustrate the risks to U.S. military personnel if the information discussed in the group chat had fallen into the hands of America's adversaries.
“Nobody is willing to come to us and say, ‘This was wrong, this was a breach of security, and we won’t do it again,’” Crow said. “It is outrageous and it is a leadership failure, and that is why Secretary Hegseth — who undoubtedly transmitted classified, sensitive operational information via this chain — must resign immediately.”
Watch Crow’s line of questioning here: