The Trump administration’s pick to lead the Justice Department’s national security operations told senators he hadn’t read up on top government officials mistakenly including a journalist in a group chat about U.S. plans to bomb Yemen — refusing to deem the matter concerning.
John Andrew Eisenberg, a former National Security Council legal adviser, defended his decision to not familiarize himself with what’s become a burgeoning scandal — one that has already led to calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to resign or be fired.
“There are millions of things going on,” Eisenberg said. “I just didn’t happen to learn about this one.”
That prompted a rebuke from Sen. Adam Schiff, given that Eisenberg is positioned to oversee the section of the chief law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the nation’s secrets by hunting down spies and prosecuting the mishandling of sensitive information.
“If you want to head the national security division at the Department of Justice, you don’t stick your head in the sand when you’ve had a serious breach of our national security so you don’t have to answer uncomfortable questions,” Schiff said.
The back-and-forth in Congress went on just as the scandal evolved Wednesday morning. Days before a weekend U.S. missile strike on Houthi rebels who have attacked ships passing through the Red Sea, Michael Waltz, the White House national security adviser, included The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a group chat on the encrypted messaging platform Signal — along with Vice President JD Vance, State Secretary Marco Rubio and others.
On Monday, The Atlantic ran a story titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.” When administration officials trivialized the matter, The Atlantic then published the actual texts on Wednesday. The nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight has now sued the government over its use of Signal’s automatic deletion of messages as a violation of federal records preservation laws.
At the Senate hearing, Eisenberg refused to qualify the Signal leak as a matter of concern, calling it a “hypothetical” and saying that it’s “very difficult” to answer questions about it.
“Are you desiring to be willfully blind to what just happened?” Schiff asked him.
“No, I was trying to prepare for this hearing — among other things,” Eisenberg responded.
“Oh and you didn’t anticipate you’d be asked about this? Or is it because you anticipated you would be asked about this and you didn’t want to inform yourself of this incredible breach of national security?” Schiff shot back.
National security prosecutors and FBI agents assigned to counterintelligence missions tend to take a hyper-conservative approach when considering how people handle classified material. The DOJ is known for severely cracking down on government employees and contractors who inappropriately transport restricted records. That has resulted in recent criminal charges: One example of this stringent policy, in a case reviewed by NOTUS, involved criminal charges against a woman who took home classified papers to work on government-related academic research in the Pacific.
During the hearing, senators also questioned two other lawyers the White House wants to join DOJ brass as assistant attorneys general: Brett Shumate and Patrick David Davis.
Shumate is currently the acting head of the civil division, which has become the frontline defense of President Donald Trump’s various executive orders. His team is currently defending the White House’s attack on birthright citizenship, which a federal judge deemed “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Sen. Mazie Hirono was openly frustrated when Shumate refused to answer questions about that policy.
“I have to say, Mr. Shumate, that ... for you all to spend your time and resources going after this as a way to make a political point is not the way I would expect the Justice Department to comport itself,” she said.
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.