Hegseth Clinton emails

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On Fox, Trump officials previously stressed care and caution with classified information. They're now facing criticism for sharing detailed war plans with a journalist.

Then-Fox host Pete Hegseth: “If it was anyone other than Clinton, they would be in jail”

Written by Noah Dowe, Payton Armstrong & Torri Lonergan

Published

Reports that top Trump administration national security officials shared plans for recent military strikes in an insecure group chat — where a journalist was also mistakenly added — come after years of many of those same officials lamenting the supposedly negligent handling of classified information by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Joe Biden.

Between 2016 and 2024, Trump officials included in the newly reported group chat appeared on Fox and declared that “if at the very top there's no accountability,” then we have “two tiers of justice”; asserted that “it’s always a good thing we see investigation and prosecution of folks if they're not handling that classified information appropriately”; and suggested that it’s “damaging” to the United States’ “ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence or recklessness in handling information.”

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  • National security experts are sounding the alarm that Trump administration officials used a Signal group chat — and mistakenly added a journalist — to discuss plans for impending U.S. military action

    • The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he was seemingly added inadvertently to a Signal group chat about military strikes in Yemen by Trump national security adviser Michael Waltz. The group chat reportedly consisted of top national security officials including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, as well as Vice President JD Vance. Goldberg reported that he knew of the attacks two hours before they occurred because Hegseth “had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m,” including “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.” The authenticity of group chat was confirmed by Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council. [The Atlantic, 3/24/25]
    • Politico: “Experts say communicating the military plans of the U.S. government in a non-classified space creates a massive security vulnerability.” Politico reported that “the app’s security is viewed as fairly strong due to its robust privacy features and minimal data collection. … But experts agree that it shouldn’t be used by government officials as an alternative to communicating through more secure, sanctioned government communications — which Signal is not.” [Politico, 3/25/25]
    • CNN: “Using a Signal chat to share highly classified information and accidentally including a reporter on the discussion also raises the possibility of violations of federal laws such as the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to mishandle national defense information.” Additionally, The New York Times reported that the group chat’s planning “did not take place on government-vetted secure systems and it may have occurred on government officials’ phones, which have been targets of hacking by foreign adversaries. Moreover, Waltz had set some of the group’s messages to disappear after one week and some after four weeks. Because they involved discussions about official acts, if they weren’t promptly forwarded to official government accounts for archiving, the participants could have run afoul of federal laws.” [CNN, 10/24/25; The New York Times, 3/25/25]
    • U.S. adversaries, including Russia, have recently attempted to hack Signal communications of foreign military staffers. A report last month from Google-owned security firm Mandiant found that Russian state-linked hacking groups had “snuck into some Ukrainian military staffers' Signal messenger accounts to gain access to sensitive communications.” Additionally, CBS News reported “Trump's Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin” while being included in the “Houthi PC small group” chat on Signal, citing security experts who warned that “some methods of hijacking smartphones don't even even require direct access to the device.” [Politico, 2/19/25; CBS News, 3/25/25]

  • Reported Trump officials in the Signal group chat previously spent years attacking Democrats on Fox News for their handling of classified information

  • Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

    • While discussing Hillary Clinton’s email server in 2016, Hegseth asked, “How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence or recklessness in handling information?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/8/16]
    • Later in the show, Hegseth lamented that “the people we rely on to do dangerous and difficult things for us rely on one thing from us: That we will not reveal their identity and not be reckless with the dangerous things they are doing for us.” “That's the national security implications of a private server that's unsecured,” Hegseth added. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/8/16]
    • Hegseth: “America knows what the words top secret mean, this is stuff that shouldn't be seen by anybody.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/2/15]
    • Hegseth argued in 2016 that “if it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now for what has been done because the assumption is in the intelligence community, if you are using unclassified means, there is the potential for and likelihood that foreign governments are targeting those accounts.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 2/11/16]
    • Hegseth argued that then-FBI Director James Comey “should have prosecuted” Clinton “when he had a chance.” Hegseth claimed, “The evidence that comes out shows how guilty they really are.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 8/30/16]
    • While guest hosting on Fox Business, Hegseth touted the first Trump administration “firing hundreds of Obama holdovers” from the National Security Council “to end leaks of sensitive information.” Hegseth said, “I love this next story. The head of the White House National Security Council is reportedly firing hundreds of Obama holdovers to end leaks of sensitive information — and it's about time — to consolidate a, quote, ‘bloated staff.’" [Fox Business, Lou Dobbs Tonight, 1/2/20]
    • Hegseth complained about the media “obsessing over Donald Trump flushing paper down the toilet while not caring about Hillary Clinton’s emails.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 2/13/22]
    • Suggesting Biden’s handling of classified information was not prosecuted “because of his position,” Hegseth said, “When I was an infantryman, if I brought one piece of classified information home or out of a classified area — the law is ironclad.” [Fox News, Hannity, 1/16/23]
    • Hegseth complained that Biden “handled classified documents this flippantly,” saying, “If at the very top there's no accountability,” then we have “two tiers of justice.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 1/24/23]

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio

    • Appearing on Hannity during his 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign, Rubio said about Clinton’s emails: “When I’m president of the United States, neither she nor any of these other people are going to be above the law.” Rubio said President Barack Obama “is willing to protect his political cronies, but we’re going to hold people accountable — nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is. … She did all this because she wanted it for convenience, and so she didn’t care that she exposed classified and sensitive information to espionage from the Chinese and the Russians.” [Fox News, Hannity, 1/11/16]
    • In a later interview on Hannity, Rubio claimed that “if someone on my staff were to remove intelligence information and put it on their private server, they would be fired and they would be indicted, in my opinion, or charged. No one is above the law.” [Fox News, Hannity, 1/28/16] 


    CIA Director John Ratcliffe

    • In a Fox interview, Ratcliffe praised the 2018 arrest of a Senate staffer following “the potential leaking of classified information” to The New York Times, saying, “It's always a good thing we see investigation and prosecution of folks if they're not handling that classified information appropriately.” Ratcliffe: “The Senate intelligence committee and the House intelligence committee have oversight over the FBI, over the CIA, and over the NSA, and as a result the folks on the committee and the folks that work for those committees have access to our most sensitive national security matters. So it's always a good thing we see investigation and prosecution of folks if they're not handling that classified information appropriately.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 6/18/18; NBC News, 6/7/18]
    • As director of national intelligence in the first Trump administration, Ratcliffe promised he would “continue to do the things that I can to ensure that we protect classified information and go after people that leak it.” Ratcliffe was responding to Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo, who demanded, “Where’s the prosecutions? Where’s the investigation into these leaks?” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 8/30/20]
    • Appearing on Fox in 2022, Ratcliffe complained that Obama DNI James Clapper “refused to do a damage assessment on Hillary Clinton with classified documents.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/31/22]

    White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller

    • In 2023, Miller complained that the DOJ didn’t investigate Clinton for “putting classified materials on that illegal server.” Miller slammed Clinton for creating an “illegal email storage mechanism” and claimed the DOJ’s investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents was a “scandal.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 2/12/23]

    National security adviser Mike Waltz

    • In 2023, Waltz claimed that “people are asking, where’s the FBI raid” of Biden’s properties “to make sure there’s no other classified documents there.” Waltz then complained that “people are saying, ‘Well, there’s only a few as compared to the volume found down at Mar-a-Lago,’ but it only takes one, guys — it only takes one key bit of information of these documents.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends First, 1/10/23]
    • Waltz later said that he “was shocked at how highly classified” documents found at Biden’s home were. Waltz added that he was “demanding to know” if “sources and methods” were “compromised.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 4/28/24]