1. United States
2. Tenn.
3. Letter

This latest bungle of national security by Pete Hegseth is disgraceful and extremely alarming. I remember when Hillary Clinton checked her official email on a private server and that was grounds for the GOP to railroad her as unfit to serve as POTUS. Now, we have not only an alcoholic leading the Department of Defense, but one who is adding journalists to war planning text threads via a non-secure communication channel--Signal. Signal is an UNSECURED, non-classified text messaging application that is being used for official Trump administration business. It can easily be hacked and is non-secure (even without the Secretary of Defense adding a journalist to a chat thread). The handling of national defense information is strictly governed by law under the century-old Espionage Act, including provisions that make it a crime to remove such information from its “proper place of custody” even through an act of gross negligence. The Justice Department in 2015 and 2016 investigated whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broke the law by communicating about classified information with her aides on a private email server she set up, and now we have the party that would have crucified her with “but her emails” using a non-secure, non-classified application about very classified national security information. This is absolutely terrifying as an American citizen that we have top officials blatantly mishandling classified information that can put our active duty service people in harm’s way and can jeopardize national security. Pete Hegseth should be investigated like Hillary Clinton was for mishandling of classified information under the Espionage Act.