Hillary Clinton, Once Accused of Her Own Security Breach, Calls Out Trump Administration’s ‘Stupidity’ Over Signal Messaging

The uproar over the communications leak over the military attack on the Houthis in Yemen shows no signs of abating.

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Hillary Clinton criticized President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth’s restructuring of the Department of Defense, saying they’re focusing more on “performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America's adversaries.” Getty Images

The fallout from the accidental inclusion of the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg into a sensitive top-level military group chat continued Friday, with Hillary Clinton calling out the administration’s “stupidity” in a new New York Times op-ed.

“We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws,” wrote Mrs. Clinton, who added she was more bothered by the “stupidity” of what happened than the “hypocrisy.”

Clinton also criticized Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth’s restructuring of the Department of Defense, saying they’re focusing more on “performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.”

“The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless,” wrote Mrs. Clinton, who was criticized for using a private email server during her time in the State Department.

Meanwhile, Federal Judge James Boasberg ordered Trump officials to preserve all communications on Signal, a commercial encrypted messaging app. Officials used the app to discuss sensitive information in lieu of its military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen.  Mr. Goldberg, who was mistakenly invited into the chat, released excerpts in The Atlantic earlier this week.

Attorney General Pam Bondi slammed the appointment of Mr. Boasberg to oversee a lawsuit filed by the watchdog group American Oversight, saying the judge, who already caught the president’s ire for ordering the administration to halt deportation flights to Venezuela, “shouldn’t be on any of these cases.” Trump filed an appeal with the Supreme Court on Friday asking it to vacate Mr. Boasberg’s and allow it to resume deportations.

“He cannot be objective. He’s made that crystal clear,” Ms. Bondi told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

In the meantime, “Signalgate,” as some critics are calling it, continues to be an issue for the administration. An estimated 60 percent of Republicans see the Signal leak as a “serious problem,” according to a recent YouGov poll.

Ms. Bondi has already said she is unlikely to open an investigation into the matter, saying that it was “sensitive information, not classified, inadvertently released,” a similar argument many in the Republican party have made when defending the Mssrs. Hegseth and Waltz. “If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton’s home,” said Ms. Bondi.

FBI Director Kash Patel also declined to say whether the law enforcement agency would launch its own investigation, deferring to the National Security Council’s review of the group chat. During a combative appearance before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Mr. Patel fired back at Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan’s insistence that the FBI should open its own investigation into the chat leak.

“The men and women of the FBI will call the balls and strikes, not you,” said Mr. Patel.


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