Trump Officials in Leaked Signal Chat Had Criticized Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server

Top defense officials who mistakenly included a journalist in an encrypted group chat about airstrikes in Yemen engaged in what officials have described as a devastating breach of national security.

But just a few years ago, several members of that group chat criticized Hillary Clinton for using a private email server to conduct official business when she was secretary of state under President Barack Obama.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who disclosed the war plans in the chat this month, condemned Mrs. Clinton’s actions during a Fox News segment in November 2016.

“Any security professional — military, government or otherwise — would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information,” he said.

Mr. Hegseth was also adamant that anyone engaging in similar acts should be summarily punished.

“People have gone to jail for one one-hundredth of what, even one one-thousandth of what Hillary Clinton did,” he said during a Fox Business segment that same month.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, another participant in the encrypted group chat, also voiced those sentiments in a Fox News appearance in 2016, when he was running for president.

“People are going to be held accountable if they broke the laws of this country,” he said. He added that “nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton.”

Several Defense Department officials said on Monday that by putting U.S. war plans into a commercial chat app, Mr. Hegseth risked compromising national security — and had potentially violated the Espionage Act, a law that governs how national security information is handled.

But members of the group chat still pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s use of the private email server years later as they denounced the Justice Department for indicting President Trump in 2023 over his handling of classified documents.

“How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government emails on a private server yet President Trump gets indicted for having documents he could declassify?” Michael Waltz wrote on his Twitter account in 2023, when he was a representative from Florida.

Mr. Waltz had reached out to Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, shortly before Mr. Goldberg was added to the group of officials discussing the planned strikes on Yemen this month, Mr. Goldberg wrote in an article published on Monday.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on social media on Tuesday that the war plans Mr. Hegseth shared in the chat were not classified. But using a commercial app to plan and coordinate military operations would be a violation of rules dictating that sensitive operations should be discussed only on secure lines and officially approved platforms to reduce the risk of adversaries spying on communications that could compromise national security.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Trump’s homeland security adviser, told the group chat that the president had given a “green light” for the strike against the Houthis in Yemen, according to Mr. Goldberg. But in 2022, Mr. Miller had shared his thoughts on the dangers of using improperly secured platforms to conduct official business.

“One point that doesn’t get made enough about Hillary’s unsecured server illegally used to conduct state business (obviously created to hide the Clintons’ corrupt pay-for-play): foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other side of the globe,” Mr. Miller wrote on social media.

The officials who participated in the Signal chat have tried to downplay their actions since the Atlantic article was published. Mr. Hegseth told reporters on Monday that “nobody was texting war plans,” even though he was the official who shared the detailed plan to strike Yemen, according to The Atlantic.

When Mr. Trump was asked about the Atlantic article on Monday, he said, “I don’t know anything about it.” The president was not reported to be in the Signal group.

And Mrs. Clinton weighed in on social media on Monday with a screenshot of the top of the Atlantic article and an emoji of a pair of eyes. “You have got to be kidding me,” she wrote.