EDIT: The hearing happened and the judge told them to preserve those messages. Aw, YEA!
The judge has called the tRump administration into court for an emergency hearing at 4pm today. To quote slang, “That man don’t fool around,” and the administration is hating life again. They’re already pissed at him because of the Alien Enemies Act being blocked. Now, purely by chance, he was randomly assigned the SignalGate lawsuit. The Federal Court generally randomly assigns cases to its judges.
From CNN: An advocacy group has sued because of the chat, accusing department secretaries and intelligence chiefs of flouting federal records laws with the auto-delete features of the Signal texting app.
Lawsuits like these can be difficult lifts legally in court for outside groups. That’s not a surprise. But concerns over the use of Signal for federal business now could prompt the judge — the chief of Washington, DC’s federal trial court, who has extensive experience with records law and national security and intelligence matters, and whom President Donald Trump has tried to paint as a political foe in recent weeks — to ask questions of the Cabinet officials and seek answers quickly.
The Signal chat case is likely to draw their attention to the judge again if Boasberg pushes for more information from top administration officials or orders a change in agencies’ approach to using encrypted apps. This mess just keeps getting bigger. The administration could have handled it quickly and quietly. But instead, it’s deny, deny, deny. It’s not working. The hearing in Congress was partly open yesterday. Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe just danced around the subject and never really gave any answers. “The conversation did not include classified material.” Except it did, and now it’s hell. The Atlantic chose to publish the chat because the administration was trying to pretend it didn’t happen, or was trying to put the blame on the reporter somehow having “snuck” into the chat. All this waffling around just proves it *did* happen. It could have been so much quieter.
So, now they have to appear in court, and the judge won’t mess around. He happens to be the head of the DC District Court group. He’s going to want answers, and he will want them *now*. I happen to agree with the group bringing the suit. A Signal chat that automatically erases information after a certain amount of time. A conversation that should have only happened in a safe, secure room. And not paying attention to who was in the chat. A judge who has extensive experience with records law and national security and intelligence matters. That does not make the administration look good part 1, and they are going to have a serious uphill battle with the judge, part 2.
It’s going to be very interesting to watch this all play out. I’m betting on the judge. He “don’t play”. The government should know this already. So, what are going to be their tactics? Stay tuned!
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We should all just let Dear Leader Trump explain it to the judge he wants to impeach. He could use his argument as quoted in Forbes:
“I don’t know that Signal works. I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you. … It could be a defective platform, and we’re going to have to figure that out.”
🤣 “Yah, ya know, sometimes when I’m trying to communicate on my phone, I can’t get a good signal, either! The signal is bad and I can only get one bar so I have to move to another part of the Oval Office because the wi-fi system I let Elon provide to the White House goes in and out! What’s that thing called StarJinx? It sucks! Damn, that’s annoying and that’s probably how that fake news guy at the Atlantic got on the call!!” 🤣
Yup, let Trump tell Judge Boasberg all about it!! 🤪
Haaaa! Don’t we wish? That response would be so perfect, except he’d have to do “the weave” before he got to it! The administration already knows how tough Judge Boasberg is. He’s definitely NOT going to put up with nonsense. Ho, Ho, Ho!
All those lies they perjured themselves with at the hearing in Congress, unsurprisingly, don’t seem to work now the actual truth is available.
You might have thought they’d be getting better at lying with all the practice they’re getting, but once the other side has access to the truth, like now, they don’t work anyway
They just look incompetent, desperate, and weak.
Because that is the truth.