Bulwark Takes - Sen. Warner says Hegseth Must Resign In Wake Of Text Disaster

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Sen. Mark Warner joins Tim Miller to break down the Signal chat scandal, national security concerns, and troubling reports of legal refugees being deported without due process.

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Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Single item at regular price. Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Bulwark. I'm Tim, and I'm here with the vice chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. He was the Democratic point man yesterday on the hearing with Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe and Kash

Patel that ended up focusing a lot on the signal text chain heard around the world. How are you doing, Senator? Well, Tim, it's been a wild 24 hours. And again, just at the outset, I thought these guys couldn't shock me anymore. But this last incident, it's like, oh my gosh, as an intel got my head's exploding. Well, what shocked you the most from the hearings yesterday? And obviously we've learned a lot since then. The actual texts have been released by the Atlantic when you guys were questioning them yesterday. It still is not public, but yeah.

What struck you? I think what shocked me was the one, the arrogance of the crowd that there was that these folks didn't apologize to the fact that they had to suspect that these folks didn't apologize. Two, the fact that they had to suspect that this information would come out. And I think particularly Ms. Gabbard was downright lying, acting like she didn't know what was in the materials, wouldn't acknowledge whether she was on the chat, wouldn't acknowledge what was her phone or a government phone. And then I guess today, when anybody who's been around the intel world at all would say, of course,

if you have specific indication about a strike that's about to take place, where American pilots are flying into harm's way, where if that information got to the enemy, American lives could get lost. No one, no one would say that isn't classified information or shouldn't be released. And the fact that the administration is trying to semantic argue whether this was a war plan or a battle plan, I don't get it. I don't get it. Crazy. So what's next? I mean, should there be investigations, resignations? We got to find out how deep this went. You know, here are the questions that we got to get right away. I'm writing Director Patel today. He said yesterday he didn't know much about it. I'll grant him the benefit of the doubt.

So he's going to open an investigation. Remember, this is a group that Tulsi Gabbard said 12 days ago, they're going to pursue every leaker to the end of the world. I mean, Patel has said the same thing. So we'll see if they will hold to those standards. But some of the things we obviously need is we need to know if the phones have been secured and checked for malware. You know, the craziness is you can drop in malware without the bad guys physically holding your device. So we've got to check and make sure the devices are not compromised. Secondly, we've got to figure out, since I don't think Secretary Hegstaff typed all this stuff out, did he cut and paste this? From what document is that floating around on another signal chat that we're not aware of? And third,

if they try to make, and I don't, I'm unclear whether they're actually claiming that somehow this is not classified because Hegstaff declified it, which, again, doesn't pass the smell test. But if there is even that that argument, you know, who decided it was HEGSF? I mean, Gabbard, again, is national executive in charge of classifications. Those are some of the next steps. You know, and we also need to make sure, again, how are we going to improve security hygiene? And I guess the last point I want to make, and this, I think, is really important for folks who are not kind of in the middle of this day in and day out the way I am. If this was a one-off, one-time mistake, it would still be egregious.

People would still get fired if you are a military officer or an intelligence officer. But this is a freaking pattern. Remember, the first two weeks of the administration, the administration let out the identities of 200 CIA agents. Those people are burned in terms of being able to work abroad. This is a group where the Musk boys, the Doge bros, you know, almost on a daily basis are revealing private information, classified information. It doesn't rise to this level, but there is just this carelessness, sloppiness around keeping secrets that I think at the end of the day both robs the intelligence community of their trust and their leadership, but also scares the damn hell out of all of our allies are going to say, do I really want to share my best secrets and sources and methods with this team? Well, this is where I was going to go next, because I thought the DNI Gabbard looked pretty rattled yesterday at the hearing. She would not answer a direct question

from your colleague, Senator Reid, about which phone she was on, whether it was her personal phone or a government phone. She was overseas when these exchanges were happening. So talk about the potential OPSEC threats there with the head of the DNI being overseas and having these exchange. And expand on that question with our allies. I mean, I'm sure you've talked to allied countries. There's got to be resignation at this point or deep concern about sharing information with somebody like that at the top of the intelligence operation. Well, huge concern.

But let me take those in order. You know, there was actually a piece of good news that Whitcoff, Steve Whitcoff, who was President Trump's friend, he had the common sense to not take any device when he was in Russia. So he was on the chain, but I think he appears to be responsible because he didn't take the device with him. Though we don't know where the device was, and it was still getting war plans sent to it. But yeah, it's better than having it in the ground. But it was not sitting in a hotel room or even a faraday bag you know in moscow someplace uh gabbard not so much we don't know was it an official phone or was it

her own phone and if she's in the middle of of you know southeast asia where bad guys have more ability to penetrate um and just the arrogance of, I'm not going to tell you whether it was an official phone or not. And that you, you know, Tim, you've been around this stuff. If you're traveling and she's the director of national intelligence

and she's on an American plane or visiting American intel stations in Southeast Asia, you got plenty of secure communications. It's not rocket science. Don't do this stuff on an unclassified network. I've called for Hexaf's resignation because, again, I think putting this stuff out is so far beyond the pale on signal. Yeah, let's just talk about that really quick, then we'll get back to the allies. Because to me,

this is outside of my wheelhouse. I've never been in high-level military conversations about airstrikes. But just reading it, the nature of Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, sharing those specific details with such a broad group. There's nobody from Central Command on the chain. You have the Secretary of Treasury on the chain. You have all these staffers. It seems out of protocol, even if it was on a secure network, right? I don't know. It certainly did not. It seems like some bad judgment from the Secretary of Defense. Yes. I mean, and what you're hitting on is, we've got this pattern of irresponsibility. And then we've got this pattern of judgment calls that show that, you know, I'm not sure these folks are up for the job. These are really

serious jobs. And the irony again here is a little bit that, you know, I had a lot of differences with President Trump in his first administration. But for the most part, his national security team was top notch. I mean, you know, they did a great job on protecting the 2020 elections and things. This is night and day. Jim Mattis is not sending a text like this with the emojis. No emoji text from Jim Mattis, I don't think. Yeah, like, listen, the reason why, one of the reasons why we knew it wasn't on a classified channel, you know what?

You don't get to do emojis on classified channels. So like, okay, let's put our country, our servicemen at risk because I want to do a high five or a smiley face. That's wacky. Back to the allies. What are you hearing and how serious is this, is the concern that we're going to lose the trust of the Five Eyes, our other intelligence allies? First of all, we're the best in the world on intel, no question. But if you look in aggregate about how much intelligence we get, not just from Five Eyes, but all of our other partners, it's mind blowing and they are scared. I mean, a very human example, but all of our other partners, it's mind blowing. And they are

scared. I mean, you know, a very human example, because it got declassified, was, you know, when Austria helped us identify a potential bombing at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. I mean, if they have sources and methods, and they don't want to share that, we're screwed. Or if you think back to like the beginning of the, and this is the absurdity of their argument that doesn't make any sense. So nothing to look at here, no problem. We, along with the Brits, declassified a bunch of intelligence before Putin invaded Ukraine and declassifying that information and getting it out really helped Ukrainians push back the Russians. The idea that that same kind of information was what was being discussed on this signal chat.

And anyone that says that wouldn't be valuable to the enemy or put our guys and gals in harm's way is either ignorant or not telling the truth. Yeah. One of the things on that signal chain as it relates to Europe, again, it's like just judgment. You have the secretary of defense saying that he loathes Europe, that all camps are pathetic talking about Europe. It's just kind of a reckless way to talk about allies who are, and we have the situation right now, apparently, where four service members, I think reportedly, at least by Bloomberg, are dead. But they're NATO service members. It was announced by NATO. I mean, like still right now, our service members are in harm's way. They're working side by side with the Europeans. And here he is on this text chain, just like flippantly talking about how much he loathes them and how pathetic they are.

And what would you feel like if you're in one of these mixed brigades? Right. You know, with our NATO, our NATO allies, it just, it's, none of this makes America safer. That's the part that, and I gotta hope, you know, that my, I work with a lot of Republicans in the Senate. I get grief for that at times for being too bipartisan. I know there's a lot of Republicans on the Intelligence Committee who think they're aghast at this, but they gotta find their voice. I mean, this is not Democrat-Republican. This is like, do we want to protect our country? Do we, you know, we can have America's priorities first, but America first should not be America alone.

And that's where we're headed. I mean, have you spoke, any of them said anything to you in private? Like, just. I'm not going to tell private, but there are, there are, I don't know what the breaking point will be, but I just hope sooner than later. But it is very safe to say that a lot of my colleagues are aghast i mean they just and they just you know they gotta they gotta be willing to say this this is not you know uh about again it is about whether we protect our troops it's about whether we preserve our alliances.

And we'll see. If nobody's held accountable here, if nobody gets fired, then the signal is this kind of behavior is frankly okay. And that would be one of the most chilling things possible. All right, last thing for you, unrelated, but since I have you, I've got to ask you about it. There's been incredible court filings and media reports indicating we sent legal refugees from Venezuela who are not gang members, who are not criminals, to this San Salvador prison camp with no due process. The reports are extremely alarming to me. I'm wondering what you and your colleagues in the Senate, Democrats in the Senate, are doing or could do about this. Well, I think what you got to do is, you know, we can litigate and that is happening. But some of these folks don't have a litigation option if they're in San Salvador and they're not.

But in terms of this is the point I make is, you know, you can litigate, you can protest, or we can try to encourage, you know, for my Senate Republican friends, at least on an issue like this about due process, to vote with us, three in the House. It's not, you don't have to move the whole Republican caucus. You just need to say to some folks, hey guys, you know, criminals that are here illegally, absolutely, you know, they should be taken out of the country. But people that were not even scanning their legal status or people are ending up that are, you know, green card holders. And I even heard there was one that was I think there was somebody we found in Virginia that was ended up being a citizen who was being stopped and almost arrested. And the irony was he had a Trump sticker on his car. He voted for Trump, too. that was ended up being a citizen who was being stopped and almost arrested. And the irony was he had a Trump sticker on his car. He voted for Trump too. Unbelievable. Yeah, no. And the report from Houston yesterday is a refugee.

Somebody did it, came the right way, did what everybody's supposed to say, waited in a third country for two years, got it, you know, came to the country and they, you know, check the tattoos. I, I just, I'm a little bit worried that because of the election loss and because Trump's run so much in immigration, the Democrats are cautious to take on this issue. They're worried it's going to backfire politically. And so I'm just wondering what you make of that, because to me, this is a cut and dry case. I think strong enforcement on the border makes sense. I do think we had a border that was way too open under Biden. But that doesn't mean you're going to throw out the Constitution or legal protections. There still needs to be due process. And that's whether you are,

you know, a person here is an immigrant, or for that matter, it means it also, in my mind, means, you know, if you're a law firm, you shouldn't be penalized for who your clients are. That goes against the very foundations. Remember, John Adams actually defended the British soldiers in the first Boston massacre. Pull a little historical fact out there. Those are the things that makes America special. And again, got to believe people are responding to this. That's why you see the level of protest around the country. I think there will be, again, my Republican friends will find their voice, I hope.

If not, we're just going to, you know, we're going to keep protesting, keep litigating, and the price will be paid at the election booth in 26. All right. I hope so. Can't, cannot abandon these folks and San Salvador. All right. Thank you, Senator. Come back anytime, all right? Thank you, Tim.