The Trump administration is facing scrutiny over the use of the commercially available app Signal to discuss plans for a U.S. military attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen, but did anyone break the law?
Inadvertently included on the chain was The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who recounted how he was texted information about weapons packages, targets and timing before the strike unfolded.
Goldberg’s report quickly sparked questions about the administration’s handling of sensitive defense information, including whether the chat violated the Espionage Act.
The 1917 law “is the primary statutory vehicle through which the government typically brings criminal prosecutions for mishandling or leaks of classified information,” said national security attorney Bradley Moss.
Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson soon after the U.S. entered World War I, the Espionage Act was aimed at cracking down on disloyal wartime activities.
Despite its title, Moss said “most of the statute has nothing to do with actual espionage and instead more broadly criminalizes the unauthorized storage, dissemination or modification of national defense information.”
President Donald Trump was charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified materials after his first term, allegations Trump denied. The case was dropped after the 2024 election, with the special counsel citing longstanding Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents.
The statute was also used in high-profile cases against Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira, who was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison for exposing defense information, and Chelsea Manning, who was imprisoned for the unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Democrats have called for an investigation into the use of the Signal group chat to discuss a military operation and for some officials involved to be fired or resign.
The White House and top officials have sought to minimize the incident, stating in their defense that there was no classified material involved in the message chain.
“This was not classified. Now, if it’s classified information, it’s probably a little bit different,” Trump said as he was hit with questions on the matter during a meeting with some of his ambassadors on Tuesday afternoon.
The exact content of the messages is unclear. The administration denies they included “war plans” though Goldberg said it included operational details of strikes on Yemen, including information about targets and attack sequencing. National Security Council spokesman, in a statement to ABC News on Monday, said the message thread that was reported “appears to be authentic.”
The Espionage Act, though, predates the modern classification system.
“In this context, information related to national defense also has to be information the possessor has a reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation,” said Sam Lebovic, a historian of U.S. politics who has studied the century-old statute.
“And if, as has been alleged, operational details were in that information, I think you could make the case that would be information which could be used to the injury of the U.S. or to the advantage of a foreign nation. And technically, whether or not it’s classified doesn’t have bearing on that definition,” Lebovic said.
Still, the expansive nature of the Espionage Act — which Lebovic said could cover essentially any disclosure of information related to national defense to someone unauthorized to receive it — has resulted in it being relatively rarely used other than in the most egregious cases.
“They’re often not prosecuted because the law is so broadly written, it gives prosecutors a great deal of discretion to decide when to bring charges and when not to,” Lebovic said.
FBI Director Kash Patel was questioned by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Tuesday in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on whether his bureau would investigate the incident. Patel said he had just been briefed on the matter Monday night and Tuesday morning and didn’t have an update. Warner asked for one by the end of the day.
Officials with the White House’s National Security Council said they “are reviewing” how a reporter was added to the Signal chat, though the scope of the review, including whether it would attempt to determine why high-level discussions about military planning were taking place outside of official channels, was not immediately clear.
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