Comment by cjohnson318
8 months ago
Why shouldn't punishment or prosecution be suggested. I've worked with classified information, and I would have been held accountable for my actions, why shouldn't they? I'm tired of this Too Important To Have Consequences business. It defeats the whole purpose of having qualifications, and security, and rules of any kind.
> I'm tired of this Too Important To Have Consequences business
Sure, but short of something similar to the UH CEO, do you think anything will actually happen to them?
If they’re doing this then the president presumably knows and does too. Even if they get prosecuted and convicted (after years of legal nonsense) they’d just get pardoned.
No, I don't think anything will change, but I'm still tired of it.
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Anything less than criminal prosecution would be an abomination of justice.
Well once you've stated that the president is immune and can pardon whoever for whatever, there's really not much to do. The US needs a new constitution to enforce this, otherwise the very concept of justice cannot exist.
Absolutely not going to happen with the opposition party existing simply to supply Israel with more weapons. Chuck Schumer, the highest ranking opposition leader, the other day openly stated "My job is to make sure the left supports Israel".
Why would that level of anti-democratic corruption have any interest in justice, when the very core of that party is based on maintaining racist injustice around the world?
The only thing we can hope for is that our system collapses and our economy weakens, while foreign economies grow.
In the US, you can fly multiple planes into skyscrapers, rape three whole kindergartens, and lynch an entire race to extermination. As long as you then win the next election before you get convicted, you're in the clear.
This is the United States of America.
The U.S. doesn't need a new constitution. If you don't like the current president, you vote for a new one in 4 years. That's how it works.
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Honestly, I'm giving up hoping for even a fraction of deserved punishment too. It's hard to handle the emotional dissonance I feel repeatedly when I see injustice, so I've adjusted myself to expect minimal or no punishment and just hope things improve a little. I know this is exactly what those people who repeatedly do malicious things want to happen, and I'm not suggesting we give up seeking social justice. I just can't handle the rage I feel every time or I'll suffer from severe depression again. I need to save my willpower to still hope for a better world and to encourage or support people who are actually working to improve society.
I'm in the same boat. This whole thing is a War of Attrition, and my enemies are willing because I am getting too old and increasingly stressed out to keep up with and counter their irrationality. I honestly don't know where they get the energy to continuously be so stupid as to take classified information to a group chat, encrypted or not, like they're planning a night out.
These morons are going to get American citizens killed due to gross incompetence. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that half my country said "yep, let's go with these guys" when they saw a bunch of bungling Nazis yelling at clouds like something out of Hogan's Heroes. I'd laugh at the absurdity of it all if I didn't think we were in genuine danger.
> I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that half my country said "yep, let's go with these guys" when they saw a bunch of bungling Nazis yelling at clouds like something out of Hogan's Heroes.
I'm still trying to square how 98% of American voters went for candidates promising to continue arming the world's most live-streamed genocide, even with all those protests; even with all the footage we've seen.
How it didn't end after the Al-Nasr babies story, or after Biden was caught laundering lies about beheaded babies, or the NYT laundering lies about mass rape, I just don't know. And still the Greens couldn't get 5%?
There's something deeply dark and disturbed across the entirety of American society, and it seems like most of us can't even see it... Well, the consequences will arrive regardless.
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Do you honestly think that (a) Trump's Justice Department would prosecute any of these offenses, and (b) even if so, that Trump wouldn't just pardon anyone involved?
Yeah, there's no way anything is going to happen to these guys. I'm saying that's a great suggestion, and one that everyone should be able to agree on.
But yeah, I agree with you. Nothing is going to happen. Just like no one at the top has been held to any kind of a standard at all since maybe Nixon. Who knows, if he had just stuck it out maybe he would have gotten off too.
The corruption is now, total and absolute. A complete Nero Court like the decadent days of the end of the Roman Empire.
"Trump’s crypto empire set to expand with new stablecoin and investment fund offerings" - https://apnews.com/article/trump-crypto-world-liberty-truth-...
"...Witkoff and his father, Trump’s special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, helped launch World Liberty Financial with Trump and his sons last year. Under the terms outlined on the company’s website, a Trump-owned company has the “right to receive 75% of the net protocol revenues” from World Liberty Financial after expenses..."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077789-dying-every-day
Just a nitpick: Nero was nowhere close to "the end of the Roman Empire".
We all know this is the likely outcome, but Congress should use its powers to force the Trump administration to be public in not prosecuting and in pardoning, for the purposes of upholding rule of law to the extent possible. And the forth estate needs to throw both in their face to ensure the public understands both how everything about both what they did, and how the Trump administration will respond, is both unlawful and harmful to our country.
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Do you honestly believe this? The crime wasn't accidentally adding the wrong person to a group chat, it was discussing war plans in an unsecured channel, which anyone who has ever handled privileged government information knows is against the law.
As another commenter said, there is a thread over in r/army where soldiers are sharing stories of military careers that have ended for far less.
Or, if the chat participants really want to double down that no classified info was shared in the chat, then the Atlantic reporter should just release the full details of the chat, unredacted, and let the world make up their own mind in the info is or should have been classified.
Edit: Lol, I was too slow, looks like the Atlantic did exactly that. The CNN headline on their homepage is currently "Details Hegseth shared in Signal chat were classified, sources say. After intel officials and the White House said the group didn't disclose classified info, The Atlantic decided to release the texts." https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-presidency-news...
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Using Signal to coordinate foreign policy and military actions runs afoul of the Federal Records Act, a duly-enacted law passed by Congress and binding on the executive branch.
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Do you think they’ll get prosecuted? I am willing to bet money that congress won’t even have hearings on it.
Congress is already having hearings (at the committee level): https://www.axios.com/2025/03/24/congress-yemen-signal-hegse...
But it's not clear that will progress to anything further.
The Senate Intelligence Committee already held a hearing today: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339484/signal-war-plan...
Where the director of the Intelligence Services, refused to say, if she was participating on the Signal thread with her government issued phone, or with her personal phone...
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None of what they said was actually classified, and if the conversation included the president and vice president, then they inherently decide what is and is not classified. The power of the executive branch is vested in the president.
This didn't age well..
1. The conversation didn't include the President. Here's the full participant list for that thread: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:on5oeyw...
2. There was tons of classified material shared including specific flight times and weapons systems. Here's a helpful side-by-side on what operational details are by default classified as Secret: https://bsky.app/profile/secretsandlaws.bsky.social/post/3ll...
Doesn’t matter, they were conducting government business on a clandestine private system with the intent of evading public records laws. Literally the crime they endlessly accused Clinton of.
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The information they discussed is almost always classified. If somebody were to declassify it so that these discussions could take place on insecure devices at insecure locations, then it's gross incompetence. There's a reason this kind of information is classified.
This is like ripping the warning sticker off an oxygen tank and pretending that makes it safe to use while smoking.
I'm pretty sure most of it was classified, which is why they chose Signal instead of WhatsApp.
But have you considered that they are Billionaires and therefore can do whatever they want?
I don’t think everyone involved in this fiasco are billionaires.
They will be before this is over.
The alternative explanation, is that they have so much dirt on Trump, they can't be fired...
Like my dad always said, "money talks and shit walks".