Exclusive: Senator Schiff Calls for Trump Admin Resignations

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Speaker 3 I'm joined by Senator Adam Schiff. Senator, how big of a deal is this leak of classified information on text threads about war plans now that we've had a day or so to process it all?

Speaker 2 Well, there's no sugarcoating. It's a massive fuck-up dealing with some really highly sensitive national security information.

Speaker 2 These were detailed war plans, detailed plans to strike military targets in Yemen, Houthi targets, the time of the attacks, the sequencing of the attacks, the ordinance that's being used.

Speaker 2 All of this laid out in a commercial app,

Speaker 2 including people on the app who were in foreign countries at the time, one of whom, Steve Witkoff, the envoy to the Middle East and to Russia, was apparently in Russia, may have been even in the Kremlin while he's texting in this chat.

Speaker 2 So massive screw-up by the administration. And, you know, there's so much to be shocked about by this.
I chaired the House Intelligence Committee.

Speaker 2 When I would travel overseas, I wouldn't bring my personal electronics. I would bring, if anything, a burner phone.

Speaker 2 I was made aware anything I texted, anything I emailed, I should assume that foreign governments have access to. There is no privacy.

Speaker 2 They're going to be deeply interested in anything that's said over these communications.

Speaker 2 So to be discussing this jeopardized potentially the safety of the American pilots conducting these operations, jeopardized the potential success of the mission.

Speaker 2 And the fact that no one on this chat, not the vice president, not the Secretary of Defense, not the National Security Advisor, not the head of the CIA, not the head of the

Speaker 2 DNI, Director of National Intelligence, none of them apparently bothered to say, hey, folks, we shouldn't be talking about this shit in a commercial chat,

Speaker 2 on a commercial app. This is

Speaker 2 the most

Speaker 2 negligent handling of highly sensitive information. No one even bothered to say that, which tells me this wasn't the first time.

Speaker 2 It also tells me that beyond negligent, they're just arrogant and feel they can do whatever they want. There's no accountability.
Hegzeth, when he's first confronted,

Speaker 2 basically used the go-to for the Trump administration, and that is he went straight to the lie,

Speaker 2 accusing Jeffrey Goldberg of making this up. It's all a big lie.
They never discussed war plans, et cetera. That's their fallback.
And the results of this ought to be his resignation.

Speaker 2 I think Tulsi Gabbard should resign. If she can't be trusted to know better with national security information, she can't be trusted with the nation's secrets.
The same is true of Ratcliffe.

Speaker 2 And if Witkoff was

Speaker 2 texting from the Kremlin or from Russian soil, he should be gone. They should be fired or they should quit.

Speaker 3 So, Senator, you're calling for those resignations.

Speaker 3 You may have said it before, but you're calling for those resignations right now, correct?

Speaker 2 Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
And if this were any other administration, it would be a foregone conclusion. They would be gone.

Speaker 2 But you compound it with the testimony we heard today from many of these same people, where Ratcliffe was essentially, no, this wasn't a big mistake.

Speaker 2 And Gabbard is like, well, this information wasn't classified. All of that is just utter nonsense.

Speaker 2 And, you know, for them to try to pretend this is anything other than a desperately dangerous mishandling of national security information from the same crowd, the same

Speaker 2 Hillary email crowd, is just the most unconscionable hypocrisy.

Speaker 3 So earlier today in the Senate, there was that hearing with DNI Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Radcliffe, FBI Director Cash Patel.

Speaker 3 DNI Tulsi Gabbard was asked about these documents or these messages, and she said, to your point, they're not classified and seemed to suggest that there was nothing wrong with it.

Speaker 3 At the same time, she refused to say if she was the TG because she wouldn't say that she was in it, but she also said that it's not classified.

Speaker 3 Let me share with you what was said so our audience can hear it as well.

Speaker 2 Then I'll ask you about it.

Speaker 5 Contact the Defense Secretary or others after this specific military planning was put out and say, hey, we should be doing this in a skiff?

Speaker 5 There was no classified material that was shared in that. So then there were no classified material.

Speaker 3 So when she's saying under oath there that there was no classified information, you've had the ability to read those messages as has the public at this point. What do you say to them?

Speaker 2 Well, if they weren't classified, they should have been classified. And I think what she's doing doing is the same thing that Hegzeth tried to do, which is

Speaker 2 play with the language. So Hegzeth says, well, these weren't war plans.
So he's going to fall back on the excuse, we're not in a state of war with the enemy, therefore these are not war plans.

Speaker 2 None of that matters if you're discussing details of military strikes. The risk is the same.

Speaker 2 And what Gabbert is saying basically is this information, because it was in real time, there was no agency opportunity to classify it. Well, that's giving a technical answer to

Speaker 2 obfuscate the truth, which is this is deeply sensitive national security information, which, by the way, is a crime to mishandle.

Speaker 2 And they recklessly mishandled this information, having this confirmation conversation.

Speaker 2 And while the conversation itself, they can argue about the material contained in the conversation, the details of this attack and the timing and the targets, all of that should be classified.

Speaker 3 National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was on Fox, Laura Ingraham moments ago, trying to normalize what went down.

Speaker 3 And he was like, you know what happens when you just like put in like the wrong person's number in your phone? And like, this happens to all of us, right?

Speaker 2 Let me show you what they're doing on Fox right now. Let's play it.

Speaker 4 President, but I don't text him. He wasn't on my phone.
And we're going to figure out how this happens. So you don't know what staffer is responsible for this right now?

Speaker 4 Well, look, a staffer wasn't responsible. And look, I take full full responsibility.

Speaker 4 I built the group. My job is to make sure everything's coordinated.

Speaker 4 I mean, I don't mean to be pedantic here, but how did the number of people?

Speaker 4 Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name and then

Speaker 4 you have somebody else's number that they're going to? I'm going to make those mistakes. Right.
You've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact.

Speaker 4 So of course I didn't see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else.
Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out.

Speaker 3 So this looks like some like bizarro, awful movie cosplay scene playing out there where she like looks at the camera. That doesn't happen to everybody.
And he's such a bad liar. Like

Speaker 3 just even watching that, he should resign for that appearance.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Well, you got Laura Ingram pretending that, what, I guess she's

Speaker 2 constantly texting the wrong person detailed military strike plans. Is that something that's a normal thing of her day?

Speaker 2 That is absurd. And then you've got the suggestion that he just plants in there that, well, maybe the reporter somehow inserted himself into this chat, which cannot happen on signal.

Speaker 2 So he wants to plant some seed and he attacks the reporter, calling the reporter a loser. No, Mike Wallace, you're the loser.

Speaker 2 And frankly, the country loses when we have an incompetent bozo like you as the national security advisor. So yeah, that conversation is quite revealing at every level.

Speaker 2 They blame the journalists when they get caught mishandling national security information that jeopardizes our personnel.

Speaker 3 But Senator, they did say they're going to get to the bottom of it and they have a plan. And the plan is they're going to put Elon Musk on it here.

Speaker 2 Play this clip.

Speaker 4 I certainly think that the White House is going to get to the bottom of this issue to understand how Goldberg got to this chat. Yeah, I can tell you who will.
It's Elon Musk.

Speaker 4 He's going to get to the bottom of that.

Speaker 3 Elon Musk is going to figure this one all out too. Let's give this to Elon Musk.
I mean, it's pathetic. I don't know how else to describe.
I'm trying to find the words.

Speaker 1 It's pathetic.

Speaker 2 It is pathetic. Actually, the only good that Elon Musk could do here is if he would riff all these people that are responsible for that chat.

Speaker 2 It's so pathetic the way they can't acknowledge the magnitude of this screw-up. They can't take responsibility for it.

Speaker 2 Even while Mike Wall's saying the buck stops with him, he's saying he's blaming the reporter for his own screw-up and not acknowledging the risk that this meant to a national security.

Speaker 2 Now, the NSA had already warned people in the intelligence community not to use this app, not to believe that whatever they say on signal is not subject to being hacked or spearfished or whatnot.

Speaker 2 They've already been warned. The Pentagon put out another warning after this incident.
But they don't need to be reminded of this.

Speaker 2 This is something that the intelligence community has known for years.

Speaker 2 And everybody on that call should have had the most basic training. But this is really the problem when you have people appointed like Tel Cabbard, who has no experience in the intelligence community.

Speaker 2 And you have people appointed like Cash Patel, who's just a hack for the president. And you have others appointed like Hegzeth, who

Speaker 2 was a Fox couch potato and gets appointed there all out of their depth. And the ones who get hurt are the American people, our national security, with this colossal screw-up

Speaker 2 on signal.

Speaker 3 What's your final message to the American people who are like, what comes next? What do you say?

Speaker 2 Well, look, I think the takeaway for the American people is that this crowd is reckless with the nation's security. They don't care if they endanger our service members carrying out missions.

Speaker 2 They don't care if they endanger the success of the mission. They're going to lie.
They're going to obfuscate. They're going to act recklessly.
This probably wasn't the first time.

Speaker 2 It probably won't be the last time.

Speaker 2 These are the consequences when you appoint people on the basis of who said nice things about you or who appeared good on Fox News. This is the criteria the president uses for top-level appointments.

Speaker 2 And the result is we are less safe as a nation.

Speaker 2 The catalog of irresponsible actions is long.

Speaker 2 Just looking at one of the participants in the signal chat and other events this week, Wyckoff, this envoy to the Kremlin, this envoy to the Middle East, was quoted saying that he thought Putin was a man of his word, talking about Putin praying for Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is someone who has been so easily manipulated by the Kremlin and now potentially has compromised information of a deeply sensitive national security matter to the Kremlin, if not others.

Speaker 2 So sadly, it's the American people and our security that are going to be hurt by all this.

Speaker 3 Senator Adam Schiff, thanks for joining us as always. Great to be with you.

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