Musk to lead investigation into #SignalGate

The #SignalGate story is changing by the minute, and it took a very interesting turn on Wednesday afternoon.

While defending the leak every way possible, the administration then announced that Elon Musk would be tasked with leading the investigation into how a journalist wound up on the Signal chat discussing a military strike.

It’s a Hoax!

As I have stated in other reports, I think this would have been a virtual non-story had the Trump administration owned the mistake, fired whoever leaked the conversation, and put protocols in place to ensure this never happened again.

Instead, they started to challenge the story, as well as calling it an outright hoax over semantics. These were not “technically” war plans, but there was more than enough information in those texts for someone to figure out what was going on here.

To that point, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated, "The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT 'war plans.' This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin." The concession, as she called it, was The Atlantic calling the texts “attack plans” instead of war plans.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz added, "No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests."

Not Classified?

The National Review’s Andrew McCarthy had a great take on this in a recent post, shutting down the narrative that there was no classified information being divulged in this text chain.

He wrote, “It is undeniable, or at least it should be, that ‘information providing advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack’ is to be classified as ‘top secret.’

“That is what is mandated by the government’s own Classification Guide (section 3.4.3), which is promulgated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“I don’t see how the Trump administration, or anyone else, could credibly contend that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s texts on an unclassified Signal communications chain did not contain such advance warnings.”

Call in Musk

Trump has just tasked Musk with another assignment, and that is to find the leak.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the decision, stating, "Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this, to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat — again, to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again.”

I am the last person who should be commenting about a tech investigation, so I won’t embarrass myself on that front, other than to say that with Musk’s experience on X, I would think he is definitely the man for this job.

Personally, I cannot wait to see who winds up getting fingered for having added that number, as I am very much leaning into the idea this was done on purpose by someone inside Waltz’s camp who wants to hurt Trump.