DOJ Bends the Knee to Trump Over War Plans Group Chat Fiasco

The Trump administration has decided that it will not investigate itself, even though the reckless actions of some of its key officials purportedly endangered the lives of American soldiers.

Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated Thursday that the Justice Department would not launch a criminal investigation into some administration officials’ use of Signal to communicate attack plans on Houthi targets in Yemen earlier this month.

Bondi also declared that the details shared in the chat—which included down-to-the-minute scheduling for the launch of U.S. F-18 attack planes toward Yemen, “trigger based” strikes, and the launch of sea-based subsonic cruise missiles—were “not classified.”

Instead, Bondi praised the coordination among Trump officials, claiming that the nation’s focus should be on the mission’s success rather than the magnitude of the administration’s national security failures.

“It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released,” Bondi said at a news conference in Virginia. “What we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission.”

National security experts have said otherwise.

“This information was clearly classified,” an unidentified former senior defense official told Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin.

“These were ‘attack plans,’” a second former senior U.S. defense official told Griffin. “If you are revealing who is going to be attacked (Houthis—the name of the text chain), it still gives the enemy warning. When you release the time of the attack—all of that is always ‘classified.’”

The Atlantic was the first to report on the Signal fiasco Monday after national security adviser Mike Waltz made another critical security error by accidentally adding the magazine’s chief editor to the chat.

Donald Trump has stood by Waltz in the wake of the scandal, reiterating his confidence in the former Florida representative, despite revelations that Waltz has made a string of careless mistakes.

But rather than take responsibility for actions taken entirely by their chosen representatives, conservatives have once again opted to deflect and misdirect blame onto some of their favorite targets, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Joe Biden.

“If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was in Hillary Clinton’s home,” Bondi said Thursday. “Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage that Hunter Biden had access to.”

But those scandals were not the same. Clinton was accused of using an alternative email server to conduct state business, while a 345-page Justice Department report on Biden’s classified offense predominantly fixated on the aging president’s health and mental bandwidth. Both Democrats were the subject of respective DOJ investigations. Trump was, as well, though the classified documents case against the forty-fifth president was dropped after he won reelection in November.

And the American public has noticed the difference, with the majority of people believing that the Signal scandal matters more than Republicans’ scapegoats.

A YouGov survey published on Tuesday found that 53 percent of nearly 6,000 polled Americans felt that the Trump administration’s Signal leak was “very serious,” while another 21 percent described it as “somewhat serious.”

Meanwhile, a survey conducted in the wake of Clinton’s email scandal by YouGov and The Economist in March 2015 found that 30 percent of polled Americans felt that Clinton’s server was “very serious.” Another 26 percent noted that it was “somewhat serious” to them.

At a press conference Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio refused to give a specific justification for the arrest and detention of Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, by masked immigration authorities on Tuesday.

“A year ago [Ozturk] wrote an opinion piece about the Gaza war. Could you help us understand what the specific action she took led to her visa being revoked?” A reporter asked, referring to Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar from Turkey, co-authoring a column for her university’s student newspaper.

Rubio responded with a long-winded answer attacking vandalism and rioting but failing to say exactly what Ozturk was responsible for that resulted in her F-1 student visa being revoked and masked, plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcements brazenly arresting her on a public street.

“If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you’re coming to the United States is not just ’cause you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa,” Rubio said.

“If you come into the U.S. as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country,” added Rubio.

Rubio noted during the press conference that he has personally revoked dozens of visas, possibly “more than 300 at this point.”

“We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” Rubio said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The Guardian that “DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans,” but did not offer any specifics either.

In a move reminiscent of ICE’s arrest and detention of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, Ozturk was sent to a detention center in Louisiana without speaking with a lawyer and despite a court order. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who initially ordered that Ozturk not be removed from Massachusetts, issued a new order Thursday requiring the government to justify Ozturk’s detention by Friday.

If Rubio’s words are correct, there are possibly hundreds of visitors in the United States who have had their visas revoked for pro-Palestine speech or activism, or any political speech and activism for that matter, without any due process. They may not even know that their visa status has been revoked. They could be disappeared off the street just like Khalil, Ozturk, or University of Alabama doctoral student Alireza Doroudi, who has yet to be connected to any kind of political activism and whose whereabouts are unknown.

There have been plenty of fires blazing in the background as Signalgate dominates the airwaves this week.

Here are four stories you may have missed amid the fallout of that war plans group chat:

1. The Trump administration continues to disappear pro-Palestinian college students with no other justification. On Tuesday, Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar from Turkey, was abducted in broad daylight by masked ICE agents and later transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana. Ozturk had previously co-authored an op-ed for her student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later refused to explain why she was arrested or had her visa revoked.

2. The Department of Health and Human Services plans to fire 10,000 employees in a wave of massive DOGE-induced cuts. According to The Wall Street Journal, the cuts will include:

• 3,500 full-time employees from the Food and Drug Administration—or about 19% of the agency’s workforce.
• 2,400 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—or about 18% of its workforce.
• 1,200 employees from the National Institutes of Health—or about 6% of its workforce.
• 300 employees from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—or about 4% of its workforce.

“We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said.

3. Trump withdrew Representative Elise Stefanik’s nomination for U.N. ambassador to help the Republicans maintain their tiny House majority. Stefanik—one of MAGA’s favorite congressional attack dogs—is likely to return to defend her New York district seat, which Democrats view as vulnerable.

4. Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian Oscar-winning director of No Other Land, was blindfolded and brutally beaten by Israel Defense Force soldiers after they detained him for allegedly “hurling rocks” as Israeli settlers attempted to kill him on Monday night. Ballal recounted that he heard the IDF guards mention the word “Oscar” while beating him. “I realized they were attacking me specifically,” he said after being released to a hospital in the West Bank. “When they say ‘Oscar,’ you understand. When they say your name, you understand.”

U.S. auto stocks opened down on Thursday after Donald Trump announced “permanent” 25 percent tariffs on “all cars that are not made in the United States.”

The Big Three automakers took an immediate hit as the market digested the announcement, with tariffs on vehicles expected to go into effect on April 3 and vehicle parts one month later.

General Motors stock fell more than 7 percent in morning trading on Thursday, and continued to fall to roughly 9 percent down.

Deutsche Bank analysts noted that General Motors is likely to be hit the hardest by Trump’s announcement because it has “the most exposure to Mexico.”

A little over half of General Motors vehicles sold in the U.S. during the first three quarters of 2024 were assembled in the U.S., according to Barclays analyst Dan Levy. Thirty percent were assembled in Canada and Mexico, and 18 percent were brought in from other countries.

While a lot of General Motors cars are assembled in the U.S., they rely heavily on imported parts.

Ford saw a smaller dip, losing only 2 percent in trading. “Tesla and Ford appear to be the most shielded given location of vehicle assembly facilities although Ford does face incremental exposure on imported engines,” wrote the Deutsche Bank analysts. Seventy-eight percent of Ford vehicles are assembled in the U.S., while only 21 percent of U.S.-sold units are assembled in Mexico or Canada.

Stellantis, which assembles roughly 57 percent of its vehicles in the U.S., lost less than 2 percent in morning trading.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Tesla saw a bump of 5 percent in morning trading, after Trump’s last round of tariff announcements and reference to a seemingly imminent economic recession sent the stock cratering earlier this month.

Trump told reporters Wednesday that tariffs, which have already started to tank the valuations of the Big Three automakers, would “continue to spur growth.”

Trump’s tariffs on vehicles and auto parts is the latest move in his escalating trade war with both Mexico and Canada, which is very likely to have dire and long-lasting economic impacts on America’s border states.

Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers union, applauded Trump’s move, saying that the new tariffs were a step to “end the free trade disaster that has devastated working-class communities for decades.” In a separate statement, the union expressed optimism that Trump’s announcement could help bring back automanufacturing jobs to the states.

Representative Elise Stefanik will have to take a step back from her ambassadorial nomination in order to cushion Republicans’ narrow majority in the House.

The White House on Thursday yanked Stefanik’s nomination to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was aware of some of the discussions taking place earlier in the day to keep Stefanik in the lower chamber, according to CBS News. His caucus can currently only afford to lose six votes on any given issue, assuming that all Republicans are present. The House currently has four vacancies, with a five-seat Republican majority.

Donald Trump confirmed the news Thursday in a post on Truth Social. “I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress to help me deliver Historic Tax Cuts, GREAT Jobs, Record Economic Growth, a Secure Border, Energy Dominance, Peace Through Strength, and much more, so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” he wrote.

“With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat,” he said. “Therefore, Elise will stay in Congress, rejoin the House Leadership Team, and continue to fight for our amazing American People.”

Except, there are currently no open House leadership positions. Stefanik previously served as the Republican conference chair, but that role went to Representative Lisa McClain after Trump initially announced Stefanik’s nomination for U.N. ambassador.

Stefanik was present at Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting at the White House in February.

The New York Republican has been one of Trump’s most ardent allies. She was, at one time, weighed as one of the top contenders to be his vice president, especially after she admitted in February 2024 that she would have put party before country and refused to certify the 2020 presidential election results if she had been in former Vice President Mike Pence’s shoes.

But having Stefanik, a longtime critic of the United Nations, act as the nation’s liaison to the global organization would not have been good for the country’s diplomacy, especially as America’s Western allies begin to turn away from potential trade and military arrangements due to Trump’s tariff war.

Stefanik called for a “complete reassessment of U.S. funding of the United Nations” after the Palestinian Authority attempted in October to expel Israel from the organization for alleged war crimes and human rights abuses.

She won reelection in New York’s 21st congressional district in November while campaigning as a staunch defender of Israel in its war on Gaza, including protecting Israel’s decisions to eliminate humanitarian aid from the region. At the time of her first win in 2014, Stefanik was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

She’s since made a name for herself in Trumpworld for her impassioned defenses of the real estate mogul during his first impeachment trial in 2019. The following year, she refused to certify the 2020 election results, elevating lies that Joe Biden had stolen the race.

Pulling her nomination comes as Republicans worry about their ability to hold onto their already razor-thin majority. Democrats believed that there was a chance they could have flipped Stefanik’s district after her scheduled confirmation hearing on April 2. After all, New York’s 21st congressional district is less conservative than other regions of the country where the GOP is also “anxious” about maintaining a stronghold, such as Florida’s 6th congressional district seat, which has been vacant since Mike Waltz became the administration’s bumbling national security adviser.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration has detained another international student, but this time has not provided any justification.

University of Alabama doctoral student Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian citizen, was picked up at his home on 5 a.m. Tuesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. A university spokesperson said that Doroudi was detained off campus, but ICE didn’t respond to reporters at The Guardian or The New York Times.

The university’s student newspaper, The Crimson White, reports that Doroudi was in the United States on an F-1 student visa, awarded in January 2023, and had cleared immigration checks. He reportedly received a message that his student visa was revoked six months later and then contacted University of Alabama’s office of International Student and Scholar Services.

“ISSS replied with confidence, stating that his case was not unusual or problematic and that he could remain in the U.S. legally as long as he maintained his student status,” read a message in a group chat that includes Iranian students, according to the campus newspaper. On ICE’s website, Doroudi is listed as being “in ICE Custody,” but the “Current Detention Facility” field is conspicuously left blank.

Doroudi’s detention came the same day as another international student, Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University, was detained by ICE in a brazen arrest, captured on video, by plainclothes immigration agents wearing masks, after which she was transferred to a detention center in Louisiana. In that case, Ozturk’s arrest appears to be due to her pro-Palestinian activism, specifically her co-authoring of an op-ed in the university’s student newspaper.

Several international students have been detained by the Trump administration in the past month due to their support for Palestine, most notably Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia University. All are assaults on free speech and are blatant violations of immigration law.

The White House’s attempt to minimize the Trump administration’s Signal group chat scandal isn’t convincing anyone … not even the usual cheerleader Fox News.

Fox News’s chief political analyst Brit Hume posted a straightforward rebuke on X Wednesday of the Trump administration’s sloppy handling of the crisis, in which several Cabinet members discussed sensitive military information in a Signal group chat that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. 

“There are a couple of iron rules for dealing with a scandal. One: get the facts out as fast as possible and don’t be afraid to take responsibility. Two: Once rule one is taken care of, don’t feed the story,” Hume warned. “With regard to the Signal message case, the administration is making a mess of rule two by getting bogged down in a dispute over whether the details of Yemen bombing raids were a war plan and whether those details were, or should have been, classified. All that has done is prolong the story.”

On Wednesday, after the full details of the conversation were released, the Trump administration began attacking The Atlantic over a word in its headline, pouncing on the nonexistent differences between “war plans” and “attack plans”—as if that somehow negated the fact that the secretary of defense had revealed launch times to a reporter, and the White House then readily lied about whether there was classified information in the chat.

Hume continued, criticizing the Trump administration for attacking Goldberg, “who, through no fault or action of his own, received the Signal conversation.” 

“All attacking him did was give him a reason to release further details from the Signal chat, which appeared to contradict the administration’’s claim that no ‘war plans’ were discussed. That gave the story at least another day of life,” Hume wrote. 

In an interview Monday, Hegseth called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time.”

Later Wednesday, Hume appeared on Fox News’s Special Report, where he repeated his point that attacking Goldberg was a huge mistake. “Look, I’m not a particular fan of Goldberg or his magazine, but he didn’t do anything wrong here,” Hume said. “He got that thing sent to him passively. He didn’t do anything to get it. And when he reported on it, he left out a lot of the details. So, then they attacked him and said that he wasn’t telling the truth about it, which just gave him a reason to release the details as he did this morning.”

Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy also skewered the Trump administration’s handling of the leak in an op-ed for the New York Post, a conservative tabloid that regularly pushes stories to back up Trump’s agenda. 

McCarthy wrote that the “blunder of discussing the details on a Signal group chat that is not authorized for the communication of national defense information—to say nothing of top secret intelligence—was an unconscionable security breach.

“I like Pete Hegseth. That said, it was reckless to disseminate information about imminent combat ops over a non-approved chat app,” McCarthy added. “As defense secretary, he is expected not just to comply with the rules but to enforce them in his department.”

Other steadfast defenders of Trump’s agenda in conservative media have started to defect over the administration’s outrageous national security slipup.  

Right-wing commentator Tomi Lahren urged that White House’s “word gymnastics” needed to end. “Regarding this whole signal debacle, the administration really just needs to come out and explicitly say they F’d up,” she wrote in a post on X Tuesday. 

Conservative media personality Piers Morgan said that Trump ought to “roll some heads” over the group chat. “They *were* war plans, and it *was* (obviously) classified material. This whole Signal-gate scandal is a shockingly egregious f*ck-up that could have had catastrophic repercussions for US forces in combat on that operation,” he wrote on X Wednesday. 

Donald Trump is still publicly backing his national security adviser—but behind the scenes, the president is reportedly “mad” and “suspicious” of Mike Waltz’s contact list, which, as his allies learned Monday, includes The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

The Trump administration has reiterated its confidence in Waltz, who earlier this month seemingly accidentally invited Goldberg to participate in a Signal group chat where top administration officials discussed imminent attacks on Houthi targets on Yemen.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president has “the utmost confidence” in Waltz, while White House communications director Steven Cheung argued online that the Atlantic story had been blown out of proportion and wasn’t what former U.S. officials have described as “the highest level of fuckup imaginable.”

But three unidentified sources familiar with the situation told Politico that Trump was more than upset about the whole situation behind closed doors, though his frustration had been dampened by the success of the mission itself.

“The president was pissed that Waltz could be so stupid,” one person told the publication.

The report was soon followed by a damning revelation regarding Waltz’s behavior: Wired reported Wednesday evening that an account sharing the intelligence official’s name had left his Venmo profile public. In doing so, Waltz had disclosed the names of hundreds of his personal and professional associates, including government officials and lobbyists.

Waltz’s Venmo friends list also included a slew of media personalities, including Bret Baier and Brian Kilmeade of Fox News, Brianna Keilar and Kristen Holmes of CNN, a cable news producer, local news journalists, a national security reporter, documentarians, and “noted conspiracy theorist Ivan Raiklin,” per Wired.

As the week wears on and Waltz’s scandals pile up, the national security adviser’s behavior appears to suggest a pattern of haphazard thoughtlessness rather than isolated mistakes, for what should be one of America’s foremost security experts.

On Wednesday, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that several senior administration officials had their personal data—including account passwords, cell phone numbers, and email addresses—listed online.

Some of the compromised Cabinet members include Waltz, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The foreign publication was able to track down their information via commercial search engines as well as databases composed of hacked customer data.

“Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use,” reported Der Spiegel.

Through those details, reporters were further able to uncover Dropbox accounts and personal profiles on running apps that track users’ health data. Reporters were also able to locate WhatsApp and, ultimately, Signal accounts for some members of the administration.

Even the chief national security correspondent at Fox News is calling bullshit on the Trump administration’s Signalgate story.

Trump and co. are sticking to the story that the Signal chat that The Atlantic editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to did not contain any classified information, even though the messages contained precise timing about plans to bomb Yemen. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and press secretary Karoline Leavitt have been steadfast in this.

Fox’s Jennifer Griffin thinks they’re lying.

“There is a debate about whether the operational details Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared in the Signal Group Chat were ‘classified’or not. So I surveyed a range of current and former US defense officials who agreed ‘war plans’ is not the right term but what was shared may have been FAR MORE sensitive given the operational details and time stamps ahead of the operation, which could have placed US military pilots in harms way,” Griffin wrote.

“What Hegseth shared two hours ahead of the strikes were time-sensitive ‘attack orders’ or ‘operational plans’ with actual timing of the strikes and mention of F18s, MQ9 Reapers and Tomahawks. This information is typically sent through classified channels to the commanders in the field as ‘secret, no [form] message. In other words the information is ‘classified’ and should not be shared through insecure channels.”

Griffin continued. “This kind of real time operational information is more sensitive than ‘war plans,’ which makes this lapse more egregious, according to two former senior US defense officials. ‘This information was clearly classified,’ according to former senior defense official #1. The Defense Secretary can retroactively declassify information after the fact, but the fact that this was shared in real time before the strike took place makes it unlikely to have been declassified when it was being shared and seen by the journalist for The Atlantic who was inadvertently included in the Signal chat.”

It says a lot when the administration’s own media wing is starting to get tired of its gaffes.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on Wednesday visited the mega-prison in El Salvador where U.S. deportees are being held—and decided to post a propaganda video to push the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Noem visited the Terrorism Confinement Center in the country Wednesday, posting a garish video of herself speaking in front of crowded prison cells full of partially clothed, tattooed detainees on X and bragging about the administration’s policy of deporting immigrants to El Salvador, at times without even due process.

“I also want everybody to know that if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences that you could face,” Noem said. “First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

The video sparked immediate criticism on social media, with commentators remarking on everything from how dystopian it looked to the clear constitutional violations of deporting people from the United States to a foreign country without due process.

Many of the people the administration has deported are civilians accused of being hardened criminals or gang members, sometimes on the flimsy basis of being Latinos with tattoos. In one case, a Venezuelan asylum-seeker was deported to El Salvador because he had a tattoo inspired by the soccer club Real Madrid and had made hand gestures in social media posts.

Meanwhile, El Salvador is run by autocrat Nayib Bukele, who has been accused of severe human rights violations and has thumbed his nose at U.S. court rulings. Still, the Trump administration made a deal with him to aid in mass deportations, and now El Salvador is helping administration officials make attention-seeking propaganda videos.