Top Intel Democrat blasts Trump officials for failing to own 'mistake of this magnitude'
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) blasted Trump national security officials Wednesday on everything from their use of Signal to discuss attack plans to the administration's embrace of Russia.
“The two general officers sitting at the table, and the people who work for all of you, know that if they had set up and participated in the Signal chat, they would be gone. And they know that there's only one response to a mistake of this magnitude: You apologize, you own it, and you stop everything until you can figure out what went wrong and how it might not ever happen again,” Himes told Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe during a hearing.
“That's not what happened,” he added, listing a string of officials who attacked Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist for The Atlantic who was inadvertently included on the messages and first reported their existence Monday.
“What do you think the people who work for you are seeing and learning from that now?” he added.
In a later line of questioning, Himes quizzed Gabbard on her office’s own classification guidelines, noting that any advance information on a planned U.S. attack would be considered top secret.
Himes excoriated the “people in the most dangerous and sensitive jobs on the planet” for discussing the plans on an encrypted chat service that intelligence agencies have warned their employees is targets of foreign adversaries.
Gabbard said Wednesday that including a journalist in the chat was “a mistake” but maintained that while the conversation was “candid and sensitive … no classified information was shared. There were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared.”
But Himes stressed the potential fallout from the use of such an app rather than government-designed channels for discussing classified information.
“Everyone here knows that the Russians or the Chinese could have gotten all of that information, and they could have passed it on to the booties, who easily could have repositioned weapons and altered their plans to knock down planes or sink ships. I think that it's by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning dead pilots right now,” Himes said.
He noted that special envoy Steve Witkoff participated in the chat “while inside Russia.”
Himes also criticized the Trump administration for its embrace of Russia, as well as its dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“I'm worried the call may be coming from inside the house,” Himes said.
“As far as I can tell, we're now on Team Kremlin. We vote with them and against our allies in the United Nations. We humiliate President Zelensky in the Oval Office. The president's chief Russia negotiator, Steve Witkoff, is repeating Russian talking points and participating on a madcap Signal chat about Yemen while inside Russia, USAID is gone and with it, all American soft power,” he said.
Himes ran through a number of USAID programs impacted by cuts, including the stoppage of payments to people guarding ISIS members.
He said “China — or worse, terrorists — are filling the vacuum.”
“Elon Musk fired the people who maintain our nuclear weapons. Does that feel like a threat to you? Apparently, all of this mayhem is cheered by the president of the United States and by 20-somethings with laptops and nicknames like Big Balls,” Himes said, referencing the online alias of one Musk staffer.
“But I've been doing this for a long time, and I know that Moscow and Beijing and Tehran and Pyongyang cannot believe their luck.”