Tulsi Gabbard Suddenly Claims Amnesia About War Plans Group Chat

If you ever find yourself caught in a clear lie about a group chat to plan an attack on Yemen, the solution is easy: Pretend you can’t remember a thing.

During a House Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard attempted to walk back her previous claim that there had been “no classified information” shared in the Signal group chat used by officials to plot a bombing in Yemen.

Her defense? She claimed she hadn’t remembered.

“My answer yesterday was based on my recollection—or lack thereof—of the details that were posted there,” Gabbard said.

“I was not—and what was shared today reflects the fact that I was not—directly involved with that part of the Signal chat. And replied at the end reflecting the effects, the very brief effects that the national security adviser had shared,” she said.

Gabbard was referring to the one message she had sent in the chat on March 15, after the bombs had already dropped. “Great work and effects!” she wrote.

But Representative Jim Himes wasn’t buying it.

“So it’s your testimony that less than two weeks ago you were on a Signal chat that had all of this information about F18s and MQ9 reapers and targets on strike, and you, in that two-week period, simply forgot that that was there?” he asked.

“My testimony is I did not recall the exact details of what was included there,” Gabbard said.

“That was not your testimony,” the Connecticut Democrat replied, referring to Gabbard’s comments in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday. “Your testimony was that you were not aware of anything related to weapons packages, targets, and timing.”

Gabbard claimed later in Wednesday’s hearing she had acknowledged that there were conversations about weapons—but she ironically claimed she couldn’t remember what she’d said even just one day earlier.

When asked Tuesday by Senator Mark Kelly whether the chat had mentioned timings, units, targets, or weapons involved in the strike on the Houthis, Gabbard had responded, “I don’t remember a mention of specific targets. I believe there was discussion around targets, in general.”

This wasn’t the only time Wednesday Gabbard claimed memory problems to evade a question. Representative Jason Crow asked Gabbard where she had been traveling during the discussion, and she had a similarly weak answer.

“I was traveling through the Asian Pacific region, I don’t recall which country I was in at that time,” Gabbard answered.

“You don’t remember the country?” the Colorado Democrat pressed.

“I’d have to go back and look at the schedule,” Gabbard said.

During the duration of the group chat, Gabbard reportedly traveled between Hawaii, Japan, and Thailand before visiting India, where she delivered a keynote address at the Raisina Dialogue on March 18.

There has been some concern that the chat could have been accessed by non-U.S. actors. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, was in Russia while sensitive messages swirled in the group chat—but he claimed Wednesday that it was all OK because the messages were sent to his personal cell phone, not his work one, which he claims he did not access until he returned to the states. Though classified information sent to a personal cellphone isn’t much more comforting, is it?

Representative Jimmy Gomez slammed Gabbard’s weak attempts to feign ignorance about the group chat’s sensitive content.

“Deciding to use military force is something hard to imagine. So, the ‘do not recall’ doesn’t pass the smell test,” the California Democrat said. “It makes it—it’s unbelievable that was the case. So that’s what the American people don’t understand.

“And I know a lot of folks in this administration were saying that they were gonna take on the establishment, and drain the swamp. But you have become that swamp in a matter of days—not weeks, not months: days!” Gomez said.

The teenage DOGE employee who went by the online username “Big Balls” used to run a company that provided tech support to a cybercrime group, according to Reuters.

In 2022, Edward Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN that provided network services. One of its users was a group of cybercriminals known as EGodly, who openly bragged about stealing phone numbers and cryptocurrency, hacking law enforcement emails in South America and Eastern Europe, cyberstalking an FBI agent in Delaware, and trafficking other stolen data. The group, now retired, even thanked Coristine’s company for its support in 2023.

“We extend our gratitude to our valued partners DiamondCDN for generously providing us with their amazing DDoS protection and caching systems, which allow us to securely host and safeguard our website,” the group said. Coristine did not reply to Reuters’s request for comment.

It should be alarming that a teen who used to work with a cybercrime group now has wide access to the inner workings of the federal government and the personal information of millions of Americans.

Elon Musk, who has expressed support for Big Balls in the past, has yet to comment.

Trump supporters are desperately trying to downplay the war plans group chat scandal after complete messages of the discussion were released Wednesday.

On Monday, The Atlantic reported that top-ranking officials in Trump’s Cabinet, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, discussed American military plans on Signal, and accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief to the chat. Two days later, after the Trump administration repeatedly insisted the information wasn’t classified, the magazine released the full text messages.

The messages contained details about the timing of an American airstrike and location of missile strikes against the Houthis in Yemen—information that MAGA says isn’t classified at all, but was merely being shared in a productive discussion among colleagues.

“Full Signal text chain has been released. There’s nothing in it but the pros and cons of striking now vs waiting a month. It’s not war plans. It’s not classified info,” Shawn Farash, a right-wing influencer known for his impressions of Trump, wrote on X. “It’s a conversation, and nice to see cabinet members and staffers hashing out the best way to move forward.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also denied that any “war plans” or “classified information” was sent in the group chat.

The Atlantic later dropped “war plans” from the article’s headline, which MAGA is taking as confirmation that the discussion of plans was just a conversation.

“The Atlantic has already abandoned their bullshit ‘war plans’ narrative, and in releasing the full chat , they concede they LIED to perpetuate yet ANOTHER hoax on the American people,” White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich wrote on X. “What scumbags!”

But there was no lie. The full chat shows that Defense Secretary Hegseth sent texts detailing the attack’s timing, including “WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP.”

“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package),” he wrote. “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets),” Hegseth wrote. “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts—also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched,” and “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”

If discussing the targets, timing and location of a U.S. airstrike is not classified information, or war plans … what is?

The head of the CIA undermined the president’s excuse to enact the Alien Enemies Act during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday.

“To invoke this law, the president must demonstrate that the United States is under invasion by a foreign nation or government,” Representative Joaquin Castro said. “They have alleged that we are under invasion by the Venezuelan government.”

“The idea that we are at war with Venezuela would come as a surprise to most Americans,” he continued. “You would think our nation being at war would merit at least a small reference in [a] threat assessment. Director Ratcliffe, does the intelligence community assess that we are currently at war or being invaded by the nation of Venezuela?”

“We have no assessment that says that,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe responded.

Earlier this month, the White House made a spontaneous decision to defy a court order by deporting more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador by invoking the Japanese internment-era wartime policy.

Five of the men sued the Trump administration in response, attempting to prevent their “imminent removal.” But even after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered that the immigrants should remain in the U.S. as they await trial, Trump officials thwarted the law and sent them skybound regardless. Donald Trump justified the infraction by claiming Venezuelan immigration into the country constituted an “invasion,” and described the current era as a “time of war.” The men were taken to a notorious El Salvador prison known as CECOT.

The Trump administration pledged that every man it had deported to CECOT was a member of Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization, but family members and friends of the deportees claimed that’s not true. Some of the men that had been forced to board the planes had no criminal record.

On Tuesday, a U.S. circuit judge purported that the Trump administration’s actions were wildly unprecedented, and that the nation’s current use of the Alien Enemies Act was treating asylum-seekers worse than it treated actual German Nazis during World War II.

Donald Trump’s administration is desperately trying to spin the release of classified information by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by pretending like there is any meaningful difference between “war plans” and “attack plans.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich leapt on a new report from The Atlantic Wednesday, detailing sensitive information Hegseth sent in the now infamous group chat that Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg had previously omitted from his initial reporting on the high-level conversation to which he was accidentally privy. 

But Budowich wasn’t concerned about the obvious threat to national security—he was mad about The Atlantic’s headline: “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.”

“The Atlantic has already abandoned their bullshit ‘war plans’ narrative, and in releasing the full chat, they concede they LIED to perpetuate yet ANOTHER hoax on the American people,” Budowich wrote on X Wednesday. “What scumbags!”

It seems that The Atlantic’s first headline had used the phrase “war plans” to describe the sensitive discussion about when bombs would drop on a foreign country, instead of “attack plans.” 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also attempted to make a mountain out of a molehill in a post on X. 

“The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans.’ This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” she said. 

Leavitt is in a bit of trouble now, because she had insisted that there had been no discussion of war plans and no classified information shared in the Signal group chat. The Atlantic’s reporting Wednesday confirmed that this was not true. According to the office of the director of national intelligence’s guidance on classification, “information providing indication or advance warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing an attack,” is considered top secret. 

Hegseth inadvertently provided information on the strikes to a journalist a full two hours before the strikes took place because he—like the other members of the chat—was too sloppy to check the list of chat members before spouting off about the plans. 

The clear messaging pivot to focus on “war plans” versus “attack plans” suggests that the Trump administration can no longer back up its central, arguably more important, claim that no classified information was shared in the group chat. A claim that has since proven resoundingly false.

Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who was reportedly the administrator of the Signal chat and added Goldberg to the discussion, also posted on X Wednesday.

“No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS,” he wrote. “Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE:  President Trump is protecting America and our interests.”