Transcription
The leaks start coming, and they don't stop coming. And that has been the theme of Pete Hegsth's tenure as Secretary of Defense. The worst, and by far, I mean worst member of this administration. But somehow not the only one with a serial addiction to leaking their text because JD Vance is now unveiling what he thinks about Pete Hegsath's incredibly idiotic text message leak. And it is a damning indictment not just of Pete, but how little he cared about what he was doing. Vance's texts are the latest in a string of scandals around Hexath that will mean the end of his career, and we are going to get into it all.
But before we do, if I could quickly ask you to leave a like on this video, and if you haven't already and you enjoy our channel, to hit that subscribe button because it goes a long way in supporting our work.
Now, before we get into the leaked text messages from Vance that are just another damning indictment of Pete Haggath and another tick on the chart of why the criminality is building on him, I want to start with Rachel Matto's breakdown of all the crimes that Pete Hgstath is now facing down and why this should be the end for him >> here.
But there's not a story that I've more desperately wanted to talk to you about since this, this post story just blew this unbelievable fact out into public view. And I wonder your thoughts on all of it.
>> I am, um, disturbed by this. I think as everybody is. I, taking a step back from this, Nicole. I don't understand why we're going to war with Venezuela. And I'm not sure the administration is even bothered to try to come up with anything even internally coherent in terms of explaining why Trump has proclaimed that we are at war with Venezuela. My sense is that they wanted to use the Alien Enemies Act to illegally deport people, arrest and deport people from this country that actually weren't subject to deportation. They decided the Alien Enemies Act was a way to do that. They then realized the Alien Enemies Act required a war. So then they declared a war. Then they needed a reason for the war. So then they reverse-engineered some sort of reason for the war. Ostensibly, right now, the reason for the war is to stop drug trafficking into the United States. Today, the man convicted of the largest volume of drug trafficking in the history of the United States was just freed from prison by Donald Trump, the former president of Honduras. So clearly, if it's, if that's the area of focus, that isn't the justification for this war. So what are we doing there in the first place? Why are we blowing out of the water and killing people in boats with outboard motors, some of which aren't even pointed towards the United States, let alone verified to have drugs on them, let alone even if they did, if they were coming to the United States and they had the capacity to reach the United States and they were filled with drugs, why isn't it possible to just interdict them the way that we do with the Coast Guard, where you go and take the drugs and then put those people on trial and investigate and then follow the drugs to their source of origin and then take care of it there? Like, none of this makes any sense. It feels like they bumbled themselves into a profoundly incoherent and illegal situation in which they decided the one true benefit they were getting out of all of it is that they were getting video game-style visuals to play on Fox News and put on TikTok, and they liked that. So now they have put this admiral, the commander of Southern Command, the every senior officer in that command, and all of the service men and women who serve there, in the position of potentially being held liable for murder or war crimes until the statute of limitations on those matters runs. And I don't even know what it would be. And by backing and bumbling and shambolically rambling themselves into this mess, I'm less worried about the fate of the bad guys who have gotten us here than I am about the good people who've been put in the way of this mess. And from, from Admiral Bradley on down, and, um, it's, it's a catastrophe. I think Pete Hgsth, it's impossible to imagine that he survives this as Secretary of Defense. I think he must resign, and I think Republicans will ask for that ultimately, once they investigate this. But this is a disaster for this generation of people serving in the United States military. And that is a tragedy more than a farce.
>> It is very difficult to be, by far, the most incompetent and criminal member of Donald Trump's administration. That is stiff competition. But somehow, someway, Pete Hegsth has won out. And as I have said since this administration, before it even began, when you assemble a Fox News cabinet, you should expect Fox News results. And that is what we have gotten. A, a level of unseriousness from Pete Hegth that I don't even know if we could have fully expected. That is what he is. He is an unserious person who does not understand the job he is supposed to be doing. And so he has [ __ ] it up again and again and again. And that is the same for JD Vance, who believes his role as vice president is to be a, a serial [ __ ] poster, to tweet all the time, to make a mockery of our government. And those two things collided with this article right here.
JD Vance busted making dumb response to leaked secrets. Vice President JD Vance appeared to make light of the uproar over Defense Secretary Pete Hegth sharing Yemen strike information on Signal by returning to the chat after the messages released. The Defense Department Inspector General released its unclassified report on Hegsth's use of the messaging app to share sensitive information on Thursday. The 84-page report looked into Hegsth's use of Signal after The Atlantic revealed its editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to the chat with top Trump administration officials. While the magazine subsequently published a transcript of the messages, the IG report also included a partial transcript of the chat obtained on March 27th, which showed what happened to the Signal group after The Atlantic wrote about the leak. It showed one person, Vance, returned to the group chat amid the fallout. The chat included in the report showed Goldberg left the group on March 16th, the day after the strikes. The first report from The Atlantic was released on March 24th. "This chat's kind of dead. Anything going on?" the Vice President wrote on March 25th. His comment came as questions were being raised over whether top officials in the administration had shared classified information on a messaging app that was not authorized for sharing sensitive information. The partial transcript of the chat does not show anyone responding to the Vice President because he's pathetic and no one likes him. After his post, the next alert was the M had changed their profile to MR, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessim set his disappearing message time to 8 hours. CIA Director John Ratcliffe also changed his profile name to just John.
As noted in the report, the Defense Department provided the partial transcript of the Signal chat on March 27th, but the record did not include a significant portion of the Defense Secretary's conversation. When we asked whether the information provided represented the information the DoD preserved from the Secretary's cell phone, an OSD official stated that the DoD had provided all messages that were available at the time the screenshots were taken. The report read, "The IG report concluded that some previous messages had autodeleted before being preserved."
The report determined Hegsth sent information on the quantity and times of planned military action over an unapproved, unsecure network ahead of the strikes using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send non-public DoD information through Signal risk potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives. It read. It also found Hegseth's actions did not comply with rules that prohibit the use of personal devices for official business and using a non-approved messaging application to send non-public Defense Department information.
So, not only does this damning report just show the criminality of Pete Hegsth, it also shows what a [ __ ] loser JD Vance is. After this Atlantic report goes public about how Pete Hgsth endangered the lives of our service members by posting away in this random group chat that was unsecure, JD Vance decides now is the time to make a little joke of it. It is also funny that you saw officials, cabinet-level officials, high-profile officials in the Trump administration scramble to change their names in the chat. Like that was going to protect them. Like that was going to stop more information coming out. These guys are professional idiots. And also the fact that no one responded to JD Vance is hysterical. No one likes him. He's a loser. It's not funny. But that is what is being revealed. That these people are professional idiots. And that they also had no concern for the safety of our service members. And they all think that this is a joke that they could cover up, but they can't. It is being exposed.
Much like all of these people will be further implicated in Donald Trump's cover-up of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which Lawrence O'Donnell broke down right here. And Donald Trump and his and his attorney general have spent the year telling people there is nothing to see in the Epstein files. Nothing. There is no reason to release the Justice Department and the FBI's investigative file on Jeffrey Epstein and his criminal co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released the photographs of Epstein Island today. They said they released the photographs in the interest of transparency. Unlike Donald Trump and his attorney general and his FBI director, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee want people to know what they are finding and what they are seeing when material is turned over to them from the Epstein estate and through other subpoenas they have served on financial institutions. The committee has received financial records from JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, and the Democrats on the committee might be releasing some of that material after they have thoroughly examined it. And when they do, Donald Trump will once again threaten Venezuela or threaten immigrants in this country, or in some other desperate and often hateful way, try to use other people to distract attention from what his close friend Jeffrey Epstein did to that 15-year-old girl who tried to escape from his island, tried to swim for her life, and what Jeffrey Epstein did to the 11-year-old girl he brought to that island.
Leading off our discussion tonight is Democratic Congressman Roa of California. He's a member of the House Oversight Committee. Congressman, thank you very much for joining us tonight. What, what did you think, you were the significance of the photographs and why were they released?
>> Well, they're quite chilling. I mean, the photograph of the dentist chair with the creepy masks around, uh, you can only imagine the horror, uh, of young girls who may have been abused or raped there. These are all photographs that we got, uh, from the Epstein estate, of course, started, uh, on the tip from Bradley Edwards on your show, and we're releasing them to, uh, help put pressure on the Justice Department, saying there are many more of these photographs. We know that from the survivors. In 16 days, make sure you release all the photographs, all the files, protecting victims' identities, but everything else needs to be released.
>> Why, uh, given that there's a law saying that they, the files must be released to you, why haven't they been released already?
>> Well, technically they have, uh, until 16 days, but, uh, Attorney General Pam Bondi have has refused to meet with Thomas Massie, myself, Senator Mccaskey, and Senator Murkowski. We've requested a meeting to understand what their process is for releasing things. This is highly unusual that they would not meet with the authors of, uh, the bill in the House and the co-sponsors in the Senate to discuss release. Now, they will face criminal penalties, the career Justice Department officials involved, if they are not complying with the law. Uh, but as you know, uh, Lawrence, this administration doesn't comply with the law. So it's going to require continued vigilance to make sure that they actually release these files.
>> These people will be held accountable. They must be held accountable, and we are going to talk about that on this show every single day. If you want to support that, as always, you can hit that subscribe button, leave a like on this video. If you stuck around to the end, drop a blue heart in the comments. Keep on fighting, y'all. Don't let them silence you. And until next time, I'll see you.