Signalgate: the investigations begin

DOD Inspector General launches investigation into Signalgate. Here's why this is potentially a VERY big deal.

It was easy to miss yesterday in the midst of Donald Trump crashing the global economy — but it could very well be the start of a political crash that could define and defeat this administration.

The inspector general of the Department of Defense is opening an official investigation into Signalgate — among other things, into Pete Hegseth’s sharing of sensitive military information in the Signal group chat exposed on March 24.

Because this is what we want to see from our more senior national security officials. Texting. And emojis. About bombing.

I’ll easily forgive you for thinking that this is a nothingburger, that it will not lead to any consequences, that no one in the government could ever possibly hold Hegseth or Michael Waltz or any of Trump’s clowns accountable.

I’ll just as easily tell you why you might want to reconsider — as someone who’s long been a student and practitioner of major investigations.

A scandal and its investigation have a certain trajectory and momentum. Much like a rocket. Many would-be scandals just create a lot of smoke and noise for a day or two but fail to launch. Others achieve some liftoff but soon undergo what SpaceX calls a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”¹ And still others stay intact and manage to get to their ultimate destinations.

Or perhaps the more apt metaphor is a seismic one — a series of earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions. Sometimes a seismic event is one-and-done, and sometimes the first is only the beginning, with regular smaller events in between, all of which, taken together, can level anything in their vicinity.

Signalgate had its initial burst — the revelation from Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, and multiple days of cabinet officials giving various denials and excuses.

But would there be anything beyond that?

The answer has been a clear yes — with a steady drip of news stories every few days.

First, on March 30, it came out that there were other Signal chats hosted by National Security Council chief Michael Waltz. Then, on April 1, it was revealed that Waltz and his team are also using Gmail to conduct government business and even to share sensitive military information. Then, on April 2, it dropped that Waltz has at least twenty Signal chats going, discussing various conflict situations around the world.

This drip-drip-drip of new information is a very bad sign: it shows that the scandal does indeed go deeper than the initial revelation of the first Signal group chat, and it shows that there are a lot of people in DC willing to leak all this information to reporters. And this feeds on itself, because once reporters see a scandal like this, more of them will circle to see if they can break another story.

But it takes more than reporters. Scandals gain much more momentum when there is a combination of journalistic and legal investigation. Together they create a feedback loop. New scoops spark new calls for official investigations; new bombshells from investigations, hearings, and prosecutions provide fodder for more headlines and analyses.

Scandalgate has now broken through to this next phase in the scandal lifecycle.

First, remember that this investigation was requested by the Senate Armed Services Committee — by both the Republican chair, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), and the Democratic ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI). They joined together to call for DOD Acting Inspector General Steven A. Stebbins to conduct an inquiry.

Second, an inspector general’s office is not supposed to whitewash misconduct within a department. Indeed, their entire reason for being is to serve as the watchdog within the department to make sure that the rules are followed — and they take their jobs very seriously. These people are by and large longtime career public servants who are devoted to their missions. They are not political hacks.

Third, while Trump did indeed fire 17 inspectors general back on January 24 — including DOD’s then-IG, Jack Storch — the acting IGs who are now in charge of those offices are not Trump-picked lackeys but career public servants who have held roles in both Republican and Democratic administrations, including the first Trump administration.

Fourth, Steven A. Stebbins very much fits this description. He served in the Army, rising to the rank of Colonel over 22 years of service. He then joined the Senior Executive Service (the most elite level of the federal civil service), becoming Chief of Staff to DOD OIG in 2015; he then was promoted to being the Principal Deputy IG before becoming the current Acting IG.

Stebbins has spent his entire adult life defending and serving his country. And as a cherry on top — he is literally an Eagle Scout.

In my experience, Stebbins is not an outlier. He is the norm. This is who is in our government — including at the level of investigators and prosecutors. These are serious people, and they truly believe and pursue their missions and treat their duties with the utmost gravity.

In other words, there is a strong chance that we will see a real inquiry into Signalgate here — culminating in a formal written report that may be a legitimate bombshell.

If the report is indeed that damning, it will trigger the next phase in the scandal: a Senate investigation.

Wicker is the key here. By opening the door for the DOD IG inquiry, he is now pot committed, as it were. If the inquiry results in a blistering report, he will feel compelled to open an investigation at Senate Armed Services. And he already has the apparent support of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who told reporters that he believed Armed Services should look into the matter.

Meanwhile, every journalistic scoop that comes out will further fuel the fire that is already burning. And anything Trump does to cover it up or put it out — like, say, firing Stebbens and trying to replace him with someone loyal, or at the most extreme, pardoning Waltz, Hegseth, and others — will only make the fire rage more.

We are still very early in the Signalgate saga. But so far, it has not undergone any fizzling or any rapid unscheduled disassemblies. Quite the contrary.

1. Of course they had to come up with this Orwellian euphemism for an explosion, because they have so many of them.

But in truth, the more apt comparison — rather than a fiery explosion — would be a spacecraft suddenly becoming lost and no longer emitting a signal. When scandals fail to gather more momentum, they end not with a bang but a whimper.