CNN’s Elie Honig Breaks Down Why Prosecuting Trump Admin Signal Leak Could Be ‘Tricky’

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said Tuesday that it may be difficult to prove President Donald Trump’s cabinet members committed “a crime” by planning attacks on the Signal messaging platform. The Atlantic…

Jason CohenMar 25, 20253 min read

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CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said Tuesday that it may be difficult to prove President Donald Trump’s cabinet members committed “a crime” by planning attacks on the Signal messaging platform.

The Atlantic Editor-In-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a piece Monday detailing how he had been accidentally included in a Signal group chat titled “Houthi PC small group,” with officials he identified as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Vice President JD Vance, among others. The chat discussed plans to bomb the Houthis. Honig said on “The Arena with Kasie Hunt” that, if taken up, prosecutors would need to “show three things in order to establish a crime,” one of which “is tricky.”

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“I think two of ’em are fairly easy. One of ’em’s tricky. So first of all, they’d have to show that the information relates to national defense,” Honig said. “I’d note, not necessarily classified. The law actually just says related to national defense. I think that‘s an easy call.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe both said during a Tuesday Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that there was no classified information in the Signal discussion.

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“The second thing prosecutors have to show is that this information was removed from its proper place of custody, which just boils down to this stuff should not have been on Signal,” Honig said. “I mean, Signal is a commercially available app. You can download it from the app store. I know how to use it, hence they should not be using it at the highest levels of the U.S. government.”

“And then the third one that’s, I think, the trickiest. Prosecutors would have to show that somebody was grossly negligent. How long were they doing this? Were they on personal phones or government phones?” he asked. “Who got them onto Signal? Did anyone warn them? Did anyone say, ‘Hey, we shouldn’t be doing that?’ If I was in charge of investigating this case, I’d really be focused on those types of questions.”

White House National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes told the Daily Caller Monday that officials were investigating how Goldberg’s number was included in the group chat.

Ratcliffe also told Democrat Virginia Sen. Mark Warner during the Tuesday hearing that he was informed that he was allowed to use Signal for his government role.

“So that we’re clear, one of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as the CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers. One of the things that I was briefed on very early, Senator, by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use,” Ratcliffe said. “It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration. So, my communications, to be clear, in a Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Rumble/CNN)

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