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- [00:01]
Michael Popak
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- [00:22]
Jeffrey Goldberg
You just can't trust the Trump administration with top secret, confidential, classified information, including war plans. We knew that because Donald Trump was prosecuted for that in the Mar A Lago case. And now we've got new reporting that they actually set up a third party app. They set up a communication channel, a text message chain on signal with the highest level Apex officers on there, including the head of the national Intelligence community, the head of the CIA, the head of the Department of Defense, the Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of State, all on a text chain on signal. Except one of the people, Mike Waltz, who's the National Security Advisor, spending some time in Greenland the last day or so, he added a reporter to the signal chain. This is why you don't set up a signal chain to communicate your war plans against another group of people. So he added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine, who sat there thinking, is this a fake? Am I being punked? Is this a real signal chat about the, the, the, the, the who they're attacking, when they're attacking, how they're attacking. I thought Pete Hegseth just said that transgender soldiers can't be trusted because they're dishonest and they, and they undermine lethality. How about, how about adding a reporter to your signal chat? How about using signal, which can be corrupted and intercepted by our foreign adversaries. I'm Michael Popoff. You're on the Midas Touch Network and legal af. Let's get into it. So Jeffrey Goldberg just reported in the Atlantic that he was accidentally added to a signal chat that, that involved Tulsi Gapper, Pete Hegseth, John Ratliff, Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Susie Wiles, you name it, J.D. vance. We're all in there and they're all talking about target packages and the green light from Trump and going after the Houthis, J.D. vance, who's in the news as of late about that maybe deep fake audio that was released with him attacking Elon Musk. J.D. vance, the real J.D. vance, apparently tapping away on his signal app and his cell phone in an unsecured way. He says, I don't know why we're even doing this. I oppose attacking the Houthis. Why? Because we're bailing out Europe again. And they're freeloaders. 40% of their commercial traffic goes through those channels like the Suez canal area. Only 3% of ours. How are we going to explain it? And then Pete Hegseth jumps in. I'm going to put some of these up on the screen. Pete Hegseth jumps in with. Well, we know, but the president. I hear you. They're freeloaders. But we could just blame like we always do, Joe Biden and Iranian funding, because that, this, this Houthis who are Iranian backed are funded by Iranian money. We'll just, you know, this is, this is now their go to their knee, their knee jerk. We can't figure out messaging to the American people. Blame Joe Biden. How many. There it is in black and white. That's, that's J.D. vance and Hegseth admitting to it. Uh, the journalist, you may be wondering, was sort of shocked that he was added. He was up there on the screen as JG the whole time. Nobody questioned, who's jg? He thought he was being punked in the beginning. Then it turned out it was real because everything that this group said was gonna happen within within two hours happened. So he reached out to the White House and said, hey, is this a fake signal? Did you know somebody was masquerading as all these key people in national intelligence and national security? And the White House had to concede that it was a real signal chat about the war plan and the best they could come up with is it shows the thoughtfulness that went into the war plan. No, it shows a possible violation of the Espionage act and the stupidity of using a third party app. The app that can be infiltrated by our enemies and tapped by our enemies. But to the Trump administration, sure. Signal WhatsApp. You know, why don't they just use WeChat out of China, cut out the middleman. It's a lot easier. Now some of the people in the administration, outside the administration, they would say, well, we use signal for, for non classified. Now what's going to happen right now? Now the entire hacking world, including those run by state sponsored terrorism, now know we use signal. And now they're just going to go after all of them and try to break in. They better like change their passwords. I mean, I'm not the IT department, but I think that at a minimum should be happening, don't you? So here's the. Let me just read to you from some of the chain that was just Even the reporter. Not even a reporter. The. The editor in chief of the Atlantic. Here's what he has to say here. Here's the chain that he reproduces. The last time I went to my local mom and pop hardware store, I walked out with everything I needed. Except the right sized air filter. Why are they so impossible to find? This podcast is sponsored by filter. It's 2025. When was the last time you changed your air filters? Many homeowners don't remember, don't have time, or can't find the right size filters. Filter Easy makes changing your air filters effortless. The Filter Easy subscription service delivers the right filters to your door right when you need them. Finally, a subscription service I actually want to subscribe to. And right now, if you use my code legal AF, you can get 50% off your order plus free shipping forever. Filter Easy filters are proudly made with love in North Carolina. With millions of filters shipped, Filter Easy is the number one home air filter subscription service in the us. My Filter EZ filters arrived the other day and they are amazing. 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Filter Easy takes care of your air filters so you have time to take care of everything else. So head to filtereasy.com legal af and use code legal af for 50% off your first order plus free shipping forever. Once again, that's filter easy.com backslash legal af for 50% off your 1st order plus free shipping forever. And make sure you use my promo code Legal AF so they know I sent you JD Vance, which remember, they have now already confirmed that this is a true signal chain. Okay, so this is not deep fake. This is real. JD Vance At Pete Hegseth. So, Pete, if you think we should go do it's it. Let's go. I just hate bailing Europe out again. He had already commented earlier that he didn't think that Trump had fully thought this through about how this is inconsistent with his attacks on Europe. The fact that half of the commercial traffic through the Suez where the Houthis are operating is really European traffic. So that's why he says, I hate bailing out Europe again. Let's make sure our messaging is tight here. This is Hex. This is JD Vance to Hegseth and the group. If there are things we can do up front to minimize risk to Saudi oil facilities, we should do it. Hegseth says vp, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's pathetic. But Mike, that's Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor who's sitting in Greenland right now in order to roil up the waters there. We are the only ones on the planet on our side of the ledger who can do this. Nobody else. Even close question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time at any given given POTUS direction to reopen shipping lanes, I think we should. But potus still retains 24 hours of decision space. Stephen Miller jumps in because he's involved with everything. He's the guy behind the guy. He says, as I heard it, the President was clear green light, but. But we suit. But we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. Eg. Right. If Europe doesn't renumerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great costs, there needs to be some further economic gain and extracted in return. That's Stephen Miller. After they did the bombing in which 53 people were killed, there was a whole bunch of emojis like they were in fourth grade. Excellent. A good start. A lot of fist bumping, American flags and fire. Good job, Pete. Powerful start and all of that. Waltz goes on ABC's this Week. Compares the strikes as expected from the signal chain. Compares the strikes to the weakness of the Biden administration. See, right on cue. Blame Biden. Which is what waltz goes on ABCs this Week with. So you can't trust any of these people because they're all. They're all concocting their stories behind the scenes. Earlier today or earlier. Yeah, earlier today, Jeffrey Goldberg, who received this signal, emailed Waltz and sent him a message on his signal account. He also wrote to Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard and other officials and had certain questions like, is the Houthi PC Small group a genuine Signal thread? Did you know that I was included on it? Was I, on the off chance included on purpose? If not, who did they think I was? Did anybody realize I was then added or when I removed myself from the group? Brian Use, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, responded two hours later confirming the veracity of the Signal group. This way. This appears to be. They're big on this. This appears to be. This appears to be an authentic message chain and we are reviewing how inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. No, it's an example of how they have violated all rules of confidentiality and top secret cover for war plans. That's the best that you can come up with? So, as Jeffrey Goldberg said, there's never been a breach like this in history. But what, what do we expect? Donald Trump took with him hundreds and hundreds of top secret classified compartmented documents that cannot be reviewed. And he did not declassify on his way to Mar a Lago. He, he doesn't believe that anything is top secret or classified. He's fine with our adversaries and our enemies getting on their hands and hacking Signal. Obviously he was okay with this group being set up. He's a sloppy, sloppy man. That's going to get the United States into a world of hurt, economically and domestically and from a foreign policy standpoint. And you can see he picked people who share his views. You know, I'm sorry. I worked in some high, high end organizations, you know, we would never think to use Signal to talk. In fact, I worked in an organization that they used code words for transactions like, you know, the bird is flown and that this is that and the canary is in the coal mine. You know, all sorts of. I had to keep track on a piece of paper. It was so complicated. All right, so at the end of the day, you'd think that the government at the highest levels would do something better than using Signal to communicate war plans and adding a journalist to it. I'm gonna continue to follow this developing story here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal af. I'm Michael Popak. In collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories, the intersection of law and Politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe legalafmtn that's @legal afmtn.