10 years after Hillary Clinton’s server, Trump officials share military plans on Signal

WASHINGTON — A decade ago this month, America found out that Hillary Clinton used a private email server to communicate while serving as secretary of state — and later that a handful of the messages had classified markings.

The revelations dogged her 2016 presidential campaign, leading to a lengthy FBI investigation and Donald Trump’s promise to put her in prison — “lock her up!” his rally crowds chanted — if he won. He was the victor, but he didn’t pursue a tough-to-win prosecution of Clinton.

Now, two months into Trump’s second presidency, the top officials in his administration were discussing sensitive military operations using a commercial, encrypted cellphone app called Signal, The Atlantic reported Monday.

Sharing the article on X, Clinton was quick to suggest more than a whit of hypocrisy in the actions of Trump’s national security officials — some of whom harshly criticized her for mishandling classified information and not properly following federal document-preservation laws. 

She added an “eyeballs” emoji to the post and several incredulous words: “You have got to be kidding me.”

Monday’s brief relitigation of Clinton’s server came after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, reported that he was inadvertently included earlier this month in a national security group chat about military strikes on Yemeni Houthis — a force designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization.

According to The Atlantic, the participants appeared to have included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and others. Some were identified only by their initials on the Signal thread.

Goldberg said the Signal chats included “included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing” of the strikes. 

The thread “appears to be authentic,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement, calling the conversation — punctuated with emojis — a “demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.” He said that White House officials were “reviewing” how Goldberg’s phone number was added to the chat. 

Hughes also did not address why government officials side-stepped traditional government information systems to debate the timing of the strikes, share operational details about them in advance and celebrate their successful execution. The administration has not said whether the information was classified and at what level.

Asked by a reporter Monday afternoon whether classified information was shared, Hegseth attacked Goldberg as “a guy that peddles in garbage” and said that “nobody was texting war plans.” 

In the years since Clinton’s private server surfaced, the handling of classified information has become a major issue at the nexus of law, national security and politics. During President Joe Biden’s administration, separate special counsels were empowered to investigate Trump and Biden over their retention of classified materials from stints in the White House — Trump’s as president and Biden’s as vice president. Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, quickly returned classified information to the government and was not charged.

Trump refused to do so. His Palm Beach resort home, Mar-a-Lago, was raided by the FBI in August 2022, and he was charged with crimes related to holding onto the classified material in federal court. A court dismissed those charges — along with a separate case involving the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — after Trump won the 2024 election.

Trump had used the prosecutions as campaign-trail fodder to depict the Justice Department as a corrupt arm of the Biden White House — Biden was not charged — a message that rallied his political base and appealed to some voters outside it. Meanwhile, amid a proliferation of communication tools and new attention to mishandling of sensitive information, federal agencies took care to remind employees of proper protocols.

In 2022, for example, a top Pentagon leader sent a memo telling department employees that text messages also had to be preserved for record-keeping in accordance with federal law.  

Miller, one of Trump’s fiercest defenders, tore into Clinton that same year for leaving American secrets vulnerable to being intercepted by enemies.

“One point that doesn’t get made enough about Hillary’s unsecured server illegally used to conduct state business … foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other side of the globe,” Miller tweeted at the time.

In the chat published Monday, someone who, according to The Atlantic, appeared to be Miller (he went by the initials S M in the Signal conversation) effectively ended a debate over the timing of the strikes. When Vance had raised concerns, including a possible spike in the price of oil, the person who appeared to be Miller reminded the group that Trump had given the plan a green light.

In 2016, then-Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also sharply criticized Clinton for her use of a private server, saying it was incumbent upon leaders in government to make sure they follow the rules around classified material.

“Hillary Clinton’s actions have sent the worst message to the millions of hard-working federal employees who hold security clearances and are expected to go to great lengths to secure sensitive government information and abide by the rules,” Rubio wrote on Facebook at the time. “They don’t take their oaths lightly, and we shouldn’t expect any less of their leaders.”

In 2023, Waltz, then a Republican congressman from Florida, criticized the Justice Department for not going after Jake Sullivan, who was national security adviser at the time, for sending “top secret messages” to Clinton on her private server.

Sullivan did not reply to an inquiry about The Atlantic story from NBC News.

Vance’s office did not address the potential vulnerability of sensitive national security information in a statement on Monday, focusing instead on the question of whether his advocacy for waiting to carry out the strikes represented a substantive break from Trump.

“The vice president’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations,” Vance communications director William Martin said. “Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The president and the vice president have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.” 

Former Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a onetime Republican who is now a libertarian, noted on X Monday that officials in the group chat concluded that the attack could be carried out a month later without jeopardizing its purpose or effectiveness. Under the War Powers Act, the president is allowed to, and frequently does, authorize hostilities without Congress — which has the formal power to declare war — when there is an emergency.

“The executive branch unlawfully sidestepped Congress, taking military action that top officials admit was elective,” Amash wrote on X. “The discussion establishes unequivocally that the strikes in Yemen are unconstitutional.”

In the portion of the thread that The Atlantic published, none of the officials voiced objections to using the encrypted app for such secret material. Nor did they mention a key feature of Signal that could frustrate federal record-keeping rules: a user can make the messages disappear. 

According to The Atlantic, some of the messages were set to disappear after a week; others were set to disappear after four. 

Usually, national security officials transmit classified information through government email accounts, phones and videoconferences designated for that purpose. They use the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, or JWICS, for top secret communications, and a more routinely used system called the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, for material deemed to be secret.

When meeting in person to discuss sensitive information, officials use what’s known as a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, or SCIF, which a highly secure meeting space where phones, air pods or even smart watches or other electronic equipment are not allowed. 

All federal employees working on national security issues sign documents agreeing to adhere to strict laws on the handling of classified information. Cabinet members are subject to the same laws and regulations. 

“Your phones should be in a box outside of the SCIF that you should be working in,” said another former National Security Council staffer under a Democratic president who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In its reporting, The Atlantic said it opted to withhold details of military actions that could harm national security if revealed to foreign actors — even though those details were accidentally shared with Goldberg.

“The reason why we do things on a classified system is to protect our troops and our personnel overseas and to make sure it remains a surprise,” said a second former NSC official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the Trump White House.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he plans to get to the bottom of what happened in this instance — and find out if there are others.

“Our job is to make sure we call these folks on the carpet and say, ‘How did this happen? Who’s going to bear the responsibility? How do we make sure it’s not going to happen again, and how many other incidents haven’t been repeated so far?’” he said.

The Intelligence Committee has an open hearing on Tuesday featuring two officials who were apparently on the thread, according to The Atlantic — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (who allegedly went by TG on the Signal thread) and CIA chief John Ratcliffe. On March 14, Gabbard, who has no prosecutorial power, took a tough line against leakers.

“Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such,” she wrote on X.

In an interview Monday, Goldberg told NBC News, “We all make mistakes in texting. Usually it doesn’t involve sharing imminent war plans with a large group of people, including some you don’t even know.”

But, he added, “The thought did cross my mind, imagine if it were someone else and not me, what the consequences would be. I think this is, you know, I think this could count from a security perspective — it could count as a, you know, a near miss.”