Moss: Correct. Taking the actions that Pete Hegseth, Michael Waltz, and all these individuals took of putting this level of clear national defense information on a commercial platform—doing it knowingly, putting what [they] absolutely knew was national defense information there—would almost certainly be considered a violation of the Espionage Act. Will it be prosecuted, even in a perfect world? Unlikely, if for no other reason than Donald Trump has no political interest in throwing these people under the bus. But from a strictly legal standpoint, this was the violation of security procedures, of the trust that’s afforded those with a clearance, and of the simple basic precepts of criminal exposure for national defense information that everyone who works in this field is told to respect.
Sargent: Brad, you pinpointed a key point there, which is that in a world where the people in charge have absolutely zero interest in accountability of any kind, this type of thing becomes more problematic. And I think that is why we should be looking at what Trump said about this and really balking a whole lot and getting alarmed. He clearly doesn’t want accountability for anything that could potentially make him look bad. That’s always the organizing principle for him. And this brings us to Congress, as well. You mentioned that there would be a potential role for serious congressional investigations, but as far as I can tell, almost no Republican has said anything. I think Congressman Don Bacon did say communicating via these channels was a huge mistake. It seems like there’s a situation where having an entire political party whose whole project is to protect Trump at all costs is really not ideal, is it?
Moss: This is the concern that so many of us had in terms of this current formulation of the Republican Party. It’s not about anything in particular regarding political principles. It’s not about a particular vision for governance. It’s about kneeling before Donald Trump. Whatever he says on a particular given day is now the position in his government; they’ll fall in line with it. It doesn’t matter if it violates every other provision and every other principle they’ve ever upheld. So I have no reason right now, as you noted, to think that any of these Republican chairmen or members of Republican leadership in the House or the Senate are going to authorize some wide-ranging investigation. There would have to be immense political pressure from within, which I just don’t anticipate seeing.
