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Did Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and other members of the Trump administration violate laws and security protocols by discussing war plans on Signal?Credit…Leah Millis/Reuters

By far the biggest story of the day is The Atlantic’s stunning revelation that Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, discussed sensitive Yemen bombing plans with other senior Trump administration officials on a messaging app — in a group text that mistakenly included that publication’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

The incident has raised serious questions about whether the group chat violated laws including the Espionage Act and endangered troops. But it’s also reminiscent of how Wall Street firms got into hot water for similar reasons. They had to pay more than $2 billion for doing the kind of off-channel messaging that Hegseth and others are being sharply criticized for now.

“We are currently clean on OPSEC,” Hegseth wrote at one point, referring to operational security, during a group chat on Signal, according to Goldberg. The defense secretary then revealed detailed war plans on the same channel. Goldberg, who had been added by Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, said he didn’t include the most sensitive details from the chat in his article.

While Goldberg writes that he was initially unsure whether the whole thing was a joke or a misinformation campaign, the launching of airstrikes on targets in Yemen eventually persuaded him that it was real. (Waltz had responded with emojis to the bombing details: “👊🇺🇸🔥”.)

Goldberg later left the group and confirmed with the White House that the chat was real.

Critics say the group chat violated laws and security protocols. It did not take place on government-vetted secure systems and it may have occurred on government officials’ phones, which have been targets of hacking by foreign adversaries.

Moreover, Waltz had set some of the group’s messages to disappear after one week and some after four weeks. Because they involved discussions about official acts, if they weren’t promptly forwarded to official government accounts for archiving, the participants could have run afoul of federal laws.

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