Red Light

The illegality and buffoonery of the Signal group chat, in order of severity:


High-level administration officials (only some of whom are reckless drunks or amateurs who accidentally stumbled on-stage) held a "Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information" (TS / SCI) meeting outside of secure government channels.  This, on its own, is a violation of the Espionage Act.
They set the messages to disappear after a week, meaning that they were retaining no history of their actions. This is illegal under the laws that require the preservation of official records.
They accidentally invited a reporter into the treasonous and illegal chat.
They have offered shifting and easily falsifiable excuses for the entire incident: it was a hoax, they were hacked, no secrets were discussed, and it wasn't really that big a deal. The whole government is now running on nuke-secrets-in-the-bathroom levels of security.
They used emojis.


That last one should probably be higher.


 




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