The use of the private messaging app Signal by senior Trump national security officials is only the latest episode in a long, bipartisan history of those in government using private communications platforms to conduct official business, a problem that experts say would be simple to solve. 

Experts told Just the News that government officials use private messaging apps for many reasons, including convenience or in an effort to avoid public records laws. They say that the Trump administration incident does not seem to suggest the officials were interested in evading the law, but that it will be a wake-up call for the government about its messaging practices.

Fred Fleitz, a former CIA agent and national security official in the first Trump administration, said that the contents of the discussion absolutely should have been classified because of its sensitive nature. 

“[First] of all, was this a classified discussion? Well, John, when senior officials talk about bombing another nation, I personally would call that a classified discussion, or discussion we had to protect. And we can, you know, we can split hairs about, well, there was no formal classified material and, I mean, give me a break, this is a discussion that had to be protected. That means it's classified, so I don't want to argue about that. That means it shouldn't have been in a commercial message service,” Fleitz told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast.  

Reporter inadvertently included in chat

The messages between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Vice President JD Vance and 15 other senior officials involved discussions in the lead-up to the strikes carried out on the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group in Yemen last week, according to reporting from The Atlantic. 

The messages were accidentally sent to The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg on the Signal messaging app after an account bearing the name of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz inadvertently included his account in a group chat of 18 senior officials, such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. 

Goldberg claims messages allegedly included sensitive information like “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” but did not publish those specific messages for fear of impacting classified operations or endangering military or intelligence personnel.

Fleitz also said the use of a private messaging service raises concerns about records retention, which was a principal concern in the Hillary Clinton email scandal while she served as President Obama’s Secretary of State. 

“When government officials communicate their communications in paper or electronically, our government documents that are the property of the National Archive, we can file freedom of information requests to do that,” Fleitz said. “That's why Hillary Clinton created her home email server so she could evade document rules and classification rules so her documents could never be obtained. That's not what happened here, but we have to make sure the rules are followed precisely.”

Public business on a private network

A State Department inspector general's report released in summer 2016 revealed that Hillary Clinton improperly used a secret private email server located in a bathroom closet at her family’s home in Chappaqua, New York, to conduct government business.

The final report stated that Secretary Clinton provided approximately 55,000 hard-copy pages from her personal email account, which contained around 30,000 emails that she believed related to official matters. She had also deleted many of the emails she considered private, but, eventually, the government recovered even Clinton’s deleted personal emails and released them under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), totaling around 52,000 pages, according to U.S. News and World Report.

The IG highlighted the existence of a lax record-keeping system at the State Department and across the government, which necessitated modernization and had affected several previous secretaries. The internal investigations concluded that approximately 100 emails Clinton transferred through her private server contained information that should have been classified at the time of transmission. Notably, 65 emails were classified at the “Secret” level, while 22 were classified at the “Top Secret” security clearance.

President Joe Biden has also faced scrutiny over his use of at least three different pseudonymous private email accounts when he was Barack Obama’s vice president to conduct government business and apparent mishandling of classified documents after his vice presidency. A special counsel's investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents concluded that he willfully kept such documents from his time as vice president, shared them with an author, and knew he had them as far back as 2017, but recommended against prosecution due to his age and “poor memory.”

Maj. General Timothy Haake, Ret., told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast that the Clinton email case should have been “a wake-up call” for the federal government. 

“Yes, and it takes some premeditation and pre-planning to get the essential people into the right network and secure that network at every stop along the way, so to speak. But yes, I frankly, attribute some of this to the fact that these folks are working under a tremendous amount of pressure,” Haake said. 

“You know, they got a boss that wants it done yesterday, they’re all new to their jobs, they're all new to each other, and very impressive group of people, but they have inherited structures, and the way the team that just left the White House must have been doing their work. So I think they will learn from this experience,” he continued.

“[There] was no loss of life, there was no loss of money, there was no loss of aircraft, there was no loss of surprise. I mean, if you have to have a wake-up call like this, this is about the cheapest you ever could hope to get away with,” he said. 

Authorization to use the encrypted app

There is some indication that the use of Signal has permeated many levels of government, even with the approval of prior administrations and at least one intelligence agency. 

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., chairman of the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Tuesday that he believes the Biden administration authorized the encrypted app for communication of government business. “It is my understanding that the Biden administration authorized Signal as a means of communication that was consistent with presidential record-keeping requirements for its administration, and that continued into the Trump administration,” Cotton told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning. 

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told a hearing of Cotton’s Senate committee on Tuesday that his agency approved the use of the Signal app for work-related communications. "It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate for work purposes provided, provided, senator, that any decisions made are also recorded through formal channels,” Ratcliffe testified. "My communications, to be clear, in a single message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.” 

No classified material shared 

He said later, "One of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers."

"One of the things that I was briefed on very early, senator, was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use. It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration,” Ratcliffe continued.  Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who was also in the group chat, told the committee that there “was no classified material that was shared in that signal chat” in response to questions by committee Vice Chairman Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. 

Both Gen. Haake and Fleitz said that the fixes should be simple and forthcoming, by implementing an internal government system to conduct sensitive communications. 

“I don't think it ever will happen again, because these people are probably mortified by this…I mean, communication is all important in this business. When people are so mobile and important decisions have to be made almost instantaneously, so I think they are going to take some of this DOGE money that's being saved and put it into a program where they will have the kind of things when they…walk out of the office, they can pick up a pre-selected, pre-cleared and pre-programmed phone that'll allow them to get to…key people based on the buttons that you push. That exists, but we don't have it,” Haake said. 

“There should be a way to do this legally that does not involve a third-party software application,” Fleitz said. “Does the owner of Signal actually have a skeleton key where they can read any message on the system? I don't know, but I don't think the U.S. government knows either.”