We Can Do Hard Things
Who Said What in that Group Chat Debacle & Is MAGA Starting to Fracture? | Jessica Yellin
Thu, 27 Mar 2025
397. Who Said What in that Group Chat Debacle & Is MAGA Starting to Fracture? | Jessica Yellin This week, Amanda and Webby Award-winning journalist, Jessica Yellin, break down the most shocking political story in America: a leaked group chat between Trump’s top officials, revealing classified war plans and reckless national security breaches. What really happened in that Signal thread—and why it could finally fracture MAGA from the inside. -A step-by-step breakdown of the Signal group chat leak—how it happened, who was in it, and what was said -How sharing this information could have endangered American lives -Why the media, not top officials, took the real risks to protect national security Jessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a pioneering Webby award-winning independent news brand -- dedicated to helping you manage your “information overload.” She is the former chief White House correspondent for CNN and an Emmy, Peabody and Gracie Award-winning political correspondent. You can follow her on Instagram at Jessica Yellin. And also, to get real time, clear and brilliant reporting, go to substack.com and search for her page newsnotnoise and subscribe there. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the shocking group chat leak about?
If not, Jessica, tell us about the stunning development of Texts Gone Awry.
So this is the first story of all many scandals that we've seen in the Trump administration in the second term. This is the first story that is starting to stick, that is generating criticism from some Republicans, and where it seems that the Trump administration, it's definitely on its back heels and may have to really ultimately fire someone. We'll see. How to start.
So a reporter, one of Washington's most acclaimed reporters, Jeffrey Goldberg, is the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, one of the most serious journalism outlets in America. The Atlantic has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes.
Chapter 2: Who was involved in the leaked Signal chat?
He reported yesterday, or as we're recording this, it was yesterday, that one day he was going about his business and on his Signal app, this is an encrypted messaging app that journalists use and government officials use frequently because it's considered to have slightly more security than just a text message, but not government level security, to be clear.
He's just looking at his signal chats, which is something I do all day too. And something pops up. It's an invitation from the White House's director of the National Security Council.
the president's most senior national security advisor, inviting him, this top reporter, to join a chat that also has Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Rubio, the head of the CIA Ratcliffe, the White House Chief of Staff, and many more people who are our top national security principals in this chat.
And what unfolds over the next few days is a conversation among them about what the Atlantic and every serious national security observer I know describes as the sharing of most likely classified intelligence. Specifically, they're chatting about the attack that the US launched against the Houthis in Yemen. This happened in the last few weeks. And it was, the chat started before the attack.
It describes like deliberations about whether they should or shouldn't launch this. And then on the day of the attack, about two hours prior, Pete Hegseth, our secretary of defense pops in there and starts texting specific plans. This kind of fighter jet is going to drop a bomb at this rough time in this rough area. and starts detailing the operation.
For so many reasons, this is outrageous, egregious, and dangerous. But the most serious problem here of all of those is that imagine if this had fallen into the possession of an enemy. And they had shared it with the Houthis. The Houthis could have used this to target our fighter pilots as they were flying over Yemen and shoot them out of the sky.
So when people say lives are at risk, they quite literally mean sharing this information put the lives of American service members at risk. Where to go from there?
Yeah, there's there's a lot. There's a lot to unpack there. And I just keep thinking about so. So Goldberg is receiving these texts. I've heard him say that he he's convinced that this is a scam, right, that he's getting this. And he's like, OK, I've been targeted by some misinformation. They're trying to give me the bait.
to do something about this because there's no way in the world that this group of people is A, having this conversation on Signal and B, doing it with me present here. And and he doesn't. So he's so he's watching these texts come through. He's like, this is not this can't be the case. And then he's waiting at the grocery store.
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Chapter 3: How did the media respond to the security breach?
Yes. What he described is that he assumed that maybe this was like a phishing attempt and that it is true. Sometimes you'll get outreach from somebody who pretends to be a leaker, but they're really trying to feed you false information so that you report false information and you're embarrassed and your career is destroyed or tarnished. So he's like, this has to be what you're saying, right?
Like not real.
This is a bridge too far. They should have made it more realistic.
Right. There's no way the national security advice. First of all, as you said, there's no way they discuss this on a non-secure platform, a commercially available texting platform. We should talk about how you're supposed to have this kind of conversation. And then B, there's no way somebody would have me in the group and A, add me and B, not notice that I'm there.
So I just want to pause and say two things. One is on Signal, you can look at the, it would have the name of everybody who's in your chat so that you'd look, and I've been on group chats where we're all like, oh, we're saying things that are rude. Let's just check that everybody who's on here is in the cone of silence. And there was somebody with the initials JG. No one thought like, who's JG?
Should we find out what's going on?
And there's 19 people in this chat. I mean, this is not hundreds of people. It's a significant amount of people, but You know, on one look of your phone, you can see that list. Yeah.
And I keep saying, like, the most egregious thing is that they had the conversation on Signal. Like, I keep saying that that's the most egregious thing, not that they added a reporter. And then I'm like, well, no, that they added a reporter is the most egregious thing. No, that they... It's like, it's just all bad. I want to say it is honestly just a moment of pride for me in how...
much integrity Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic have used in the way they've reported and proceeded with this story. So I'll just make a couple points on that front. First, as I said, he thought it was a fake and he didn't report on any of it or do anything when he got the information.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of using Signal for classified information?
national security secrets, methods, and agents, and the like. So he's really displayed an enormous level of integrity. And in the end, the media did more to protect national security than America's top national security principles.
That's exactly right. And I think it is worth just, we should talk about like, this is just basic level judgment. You know, your average human is like, I check every email before it goes out. Is it the wrong person? And my kind of bar of bad things happening is minuscule. You know, this is a basic judgment issue, but it's also laws. There's so many laws that are violated by this. So
Like every standard of operational security was violated here in a way that had any other officer or soldier or anyone who had access to this kind of information would be relieved of command immediately. And there would be an actual investigation, including likely a criminal investigation and criminal consequences for the for this kind of recklessness.
Yes. And I will say even some Republican elected officials have said that. In other words, have said, you know, their former service members, had I done this when I was in active duty, I would have been court-martialed or I would have been sent to the stockades or I would have been relieved of duty instantly and prosecuted.
They'd also say, you know, an investigation has to be stood up instantly to understand the At this point, not just how did it happen and why are they using Signal and how common is that? And by the way, I'll add that it's now been confirmed that both the Pentagon advised Pentagon staff that Signal has been penetrated by Russia and to be very cautious if using Signal at all.
that the national – I think the NSC has advised people not to use Signal, that it's just – like there's an awareness internally that this is not a – that this has been breached as a platform and they shouldn't be using it, even though – we'll get into it – but principals testifying today before Congress are pretending like that's kind of like unclear to them.
Let me go back and answer your first question. When you have – and I know you know this – when you have national security – conversations that are classified around something like an impending attack. There's extreme and very specific and clear protocols that you're mandated to use by law to protect both the lives of the military members doing the action and also protecting
Sources and methods, like how do we gather this information? If Russia or China finds out too many details that we have, they can backwards assess how we got them and who's giving them to us. So like big picture, you have to do some things that are very inconvenient. You can't take documents out of the building. You have to be in the building in a secure space.
For people at the level of the head of the CIA and the head of the Pentagon, they have both in their offices and in their homes something called a SCIF, which is a secure compartmentalized environment. It means that basically it's a box that's wrapped interiorly with all this stuff.
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Chapter 5: How does the government typically secure classified conversations?
And I'll give you a – for example, when I worked at CNN and ABC News and we would travel to Russia or China, they would – the network would tell us to leave our devices – computer, phone, iPad, personal or work – at home. And they'd issue us a travel device that reporters only use when they're going to Russia or China because we know it'll be surveilled.
They'll insert themselves into the system to watch. And so you have to go with the burner device, return it when you get home. It gets cleaned and swept for the next person. I was a junior reporter at the time for a network. If you're Steve Witkoff, a top Trump White House official, and you're in Moscow, you can be sure that they're all over that device when they're texting this stuff on Signal.
Yes, because that's such an important distinction. Signal is allegedly – I mean no one is contending that it complies with United States law. that that is a place where it would be allowed. I mean, there's a DOD memo from 2023 saying these specific apps cannot be used for any kind of sensitive information, much less this level of classified information. But
Even so, like even if Signal is secure, it's only as secure as the device that it's on. So if your device is penetrated, then Signal means nothing in terms of it being secure. And so he's sitting in Moscow receiving this information on a very likely penetrated device.
Yeah. Just so people know, Signal, unlike text, it's end-to-end encrypted. Let's say the government subpoenas Signal, and let's say Signal complied, which they wouldn't, but if they did, what Signal would turn over would be scrambled, garbled nothingness. So Signal itself doesn't retain the text of your message in any way they could decipher, unlike Apple, which does.
but they just don't turn it over to the government, Apple says. Signal couldn't even provide something legible to the government. But if somebody like Russia gets into your device, what they can do is they can watch the text come in on your device just as you're seeing your screen. Think of it like they can screen watch your screen. Right.
I was listening to some former military people talk about this, and there's something at a deeper level here other than the violation of the laws of custody of classified information, the violation of the laws about even archiving and keeping records. I mean, there are federal laws that say that you have to keep records of what happens in the presidential staff, in the cabinet, et cetera.
And those have to be archived and kept. And so the fact that they were setting these settings to have disappearing messages is a whole nother level of violation, because unless they forwarded that entire chain to an official government account for the purposes of keeping those archived records, that's a whole other set of violations.
But even beyond those things, there's this bigger question to me about kind of military integrity and the kind of hallmark of, of the military command being uniform and what applies to one applies to all. And there's something deeply disquieting about knowing that every member of the military command who did this would have severe and immediate consequences.
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Chapter 6: What was the administration's reaction to the leak?
Passing the buck to Hegseth is very telling because it shows there's division within. Anyway, so since they all say it's not classified, the Atlantic goes back and is like, well, they're saying it's not classified, so we should publish the rest. They contact every one of the agencies involved and say, do you have any problem with us publishing any of this?
CIA responds and says, please don't publish one name that the director mentioned in the chat. It's sensitive. And the White House press secretary finally responds for everybody saying nothing's classified, but we want you to not publish it because it's sensitive. Lots of misspellings and typos in her message.
So they say, well, we waited all and decided that given the circumstances, the public's interest in knowing what was in here is more serious than what the Caroline Leavitt is saying. And also, we're not putting any lives at risk because the military operation's over. It's finished. So we're going to publish.
Right. And you have said it is not classified. If you, I mean, it query whether if they had said, yes, that was classified information. were so happy it wasn't leaked and compromised the troops who were carrying out that mission. And we are going to figure out who is responsible for this and we're going to take action.
Maybe he doesn't even publish it, but if you say he's lying, there's no classified information, what is he supposed to do?
And this is now a matter of great national importance, right? Are our national security principles acting in ways that are reckless, incompetent, and putting American lives and security at risk. So the press has a real, not just like interest in publishing for sensational reasons, but literal like duty to report. This is the role of the press to hold our leaders to account.
And if they're clearly or quite possibly lying on matters of such national security significance. It's incumbent on the press to report. And I would say that they put themselves at great risk because I wouldn't be surprised if the Trump administration tries to sue the Atlantic for huge amounts of money, despite the fact that they said there's nothing classified there.
So, you know, the Atlantic took a massive risk on behalf of democracy here. And now there's so many questions. I would add that not only did they these principals have to testify on Tuesday in the Senate, they also had pre-scheduled testimony before the House as we're recording this today, Wednesday. And as we're recording, they are before the House testifying there tomorrow.
And taking now questions about the second Atlantic report with the details where they're pretending, for example, that the magazine misrepresented things because the only location was saying it's at a hootie girlfriend's house. Things like...
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