Republicans such as Idaho’s Jim Risch should demand answers in Signal app breach | Opinion

Whatever your politics may be, it’s hard to disagree with the assertion that accidentally including a reporter in a Signal app thread that included military attack plans and classified information is a glaring example of incompetence.

Revelations came out over the weekend that top Trump administration officials carried out a highly sensitive and detailed discussion about a military attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen on a commercial messaging app chat that inadvertently included the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.

The misstep has been the butt of several jokes, but this is no laughing matter.

For those who have loved ones in the military, it should make your blood boil to think that the secretary of defense, the vice president, the national security adviser and other top officials were sharing sensitive military details in a commercial messaging app that easily could have been compromised. The fact that they accidentally included a journalist in the chat just shows how careless they were.

U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and sits on the Select Committee on Intelligence, needs to take a serious look at this egregious breach of protocol.

Most importantly, he needs to set aside what he’s demonstrated so far: fealty to the Trump administration.

Risch, along with other Republican members of Congress, need to assert their legislative authority and hold the executive branch accountable.

Had a Democratic administration committed such a gross error, folks like Risch would be clamoring for resignations or firings.

This is not a partisan issue, nor should it be.

If a Democratic administration had this same egregious lapse in judgment, Democratic legislators would be called upon to set aside loyalty to the party and put the country first.

Risch said there would be an investigation, but it looks like Risch’s comments already are more about absolving his friends, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Risch said he spoke to Rubio “at length,” according to an article in The Hill.

“From the State Department standpoint, I can assure you there was no one at the State Department who was aware at all there was the leakage that was going on,” Risch said, according to The Hill.

Ignorance of the breach only makes the incompetence worse.

Setting aside for the moment that the group planning the attack on Yemen accidentally included a reporter in the chat, why were they using a commercial messaging app for such a sensitive discussion with classified information to begin with? Shouldn’t they all be in a room together discussing this, rather than messaging remotely while sitting on the toilet or reclining on the sofa or looking at their phone under the table?

Doesn’t the importance of a military attack rise to a higher level?

The childish use of praying hands emojis as well as flexed biceps, a fist, the U.S. flag and fire emojis did not match the level of seriousness of the occasion, which featured the deaths of at least 53 people, including women and children. This wasn’t some video game. This was a big deal.

There are thousands of “sensitive compartmented information facilities,” or SCIFs, all over the Washington, D.C., area that they could have used, according to The Washington Post.

There’s no excuse for conducting this over Signal.

What makes it even worse is that those involved in the chat have downplayed, soft-pedaled, mischaracterized and even downright lied about the contents of the chat. They’ve played semantics over whether these were “attack plans” or “war plans.”

Can’t they just admit that they made a terrible mistake and promise that it will never happen again, that they’ll never put American military members in harm’s way by sharing war plans over a potentially compromised commercial messaging app? Is that so difficult?

It’s worth noting that the knee-jerk reaction from Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News commentator, was to try to discredit Goldberg, calling him a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist,” according to The Hill, as if Goldberg had done something wrong.

It’s become a tired tactic of Trump, right out of his awful playbook, which included calling the media the “enemy of the people,” and relies on his sycophants to attack journalists. To attack Goldberg simply because he was included in a group chat — a result of their bumbling — and then exposed the breach is as outrageous as the breach itself.

If anything, Goldberg demonstrated responsible journalism by not publishing certain information, which could have jeopardized active-duty military members. It’s worth noting that if it had been someone else accidentally included in the thread, and not a responsible journalist such as Goldberg, an intelligence official’s identity and the lives of the military members would have been in jeopardy.

After Trump administration officials denied and lied about the contents of the chat, Goldberg revealed more information to prove that he was, in fact, reporting the truth, while Trump and his people were not.

To make matters worse, we now know that the National Security Agency sent a warning to its employees in February about the vulnerabilities of using Signal, according to CBS News.

Why didn’t the highest officials in the Trump administration listen to that warning? Will they promise to stop using Signal to share classified information that could put members of the military in harm’s way? Will anyone resign for this breach? Will anyone be fired? Will anyone accept responsibility?

These are the questions that we expect Risch to ask the administration — and we expect him to demand real answers.

Risch and his fellow Republicans need to put party aside and ensure that national security is in good hands. After all, it was Risch and his fellow Republicans who confirmed these people for office.

After this, they should be having buyer’s remorse.