House Dems hint at perjury rap for intel chiefs over Signal chat leak: A lie to the country

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee all but accused America’s spy bosses of committing perjury Wednesday during a fiery hearing that delved into the bombshell Houthi strike plans Signal chat leak.“I think that it’s by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning the deaths of dead pilots right now,” fumed Rep.Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the panel’s ranking member.“There’s only one response to a mistake of this magnitude,” Himes added in his opening remarks “Apologize, own it, you stop everything until you can figure out what went wrong, and how it might not ever happen again.“It’s not what happened.

The secretary of defense responded with a brutal attack on the reporter who did not ask to be on the Signal chat.”Hegseth had lashed out at The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who revealed the leak, calling him a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist.” The Pentagon chief added Monday night that “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”Multiple Democrats on the panel seemed convinced that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were not being truthful in their Tuesday testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.“The idea that this information, if it was presented to our committee, would not be classified — y’all know is a lie,” said Rep.Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who served with both Gabbard and Ratcliffe in Congress.“I’ve seen things much less sensitive being presented to us with high classification.

To say that it isn’t is a lie to the country.”Ratcliffe told the Senate on Tuesday that the Signal chat “did not include classified information,” while Gabbard said, “There was no classified material that was shared in the Signal chart.”Later, the two clarified that they did not personally put classified information into the chat and said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would have been the one to...