It’s only been a week since we learned that national security adviser Mike Waltz added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the “war room” group chat on Signal, and now, it looks like Waltz and his staff are back in hot water for allegedly sending work-related emails from their personal Gmail accounts.
According to the Washington Post, a White House National Security Council spokesman has already claimed that Mike Waltz “never” sent classified emails from his personal account.
“Let me reiterate, NSA Waltz received emails and calendar invites from legacy contacts on his personal email and cc’d government accounts for anything since January 20th to ensure compliance with records retention,” White House NSC spokesman Brian Hughes told Fox News.
“He has never sent classified material over his personal email account or any unsecured platform,” Hughes added.
Hughes was playing catch-up to the Washington Post, which broke the story that Mike Waltz and his staff used their personal Gmail accounts to conduct government business.
From the New York Post:
The report, citing documents and interviews with three US officials, claims the Waltz aide engaged in “highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict” via a personal Gmail account.
Hughes said the Washington Post “refused to share any part of the document reported,” and therefore couldn’t verify the outlet’s claim.
“Any correspondence containing classified material must only be sent through secure channels and all NSC staff are informed of this,” Hughes added.
“It is also made clear to NSC personnel that any non-government correspondence must be captured and retained for record compliance.”
Talk about a bad start to a new job. Just last week, Waltz took “full responsibility” for reportedly adding the Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a Signal group chat where those invited were discussing military strikes against Yemen.
The White House maintains that nothing classified was shared in the chat, but I know that’s not true because everyone shares classified information in the group chat. After all, that’s what a group chat is for.
But you know who doesn’t care about any of this? President Trump. In fact, President Trump expressed his support for Mike Waltz when the group chat messages got leaked and merely called the whole ordeal embarrassing. Hell, Trump didn’t even think that Waltz should apologize for his mistake.
“I don’t think he should apologize,” the president said, Fox News reports. “I think he’s doing his best. It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect.”
“And, probably, he won’t be using it again, at least not in the very near future,” Trump continued.
President Trump even tried to cover for Mike Waltz claiming that it was probably a lower level staffer that added Goldberg by mistake, but Waltz told Fox News’ Ingraham Angle host Laura Ingraham that “a staffer wasn’t responsible.”
An astute, unidentified Trump administration official told the Washington Post, “The one thing saving his job is that Trump doesn’t want to give Jeff Goldberg a scalp. Despite all of Trump’s attacks on the ‘fake news,’ he still reads the papers, and he doesn’t like seeing this stuff.”
So now we wait for the fallout and the several mentions of Hillary Clinton and her emails, which have absolutely nothing to do with Waltz’s blunder, but you know they are going to bring them up.
They always do.
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