The dissemination of the signal chat places the initial test for the FBI and the Department of Justice.

In past years, the move of the senior members of the administration of President Trump to share the defense secrets on the signal messaging app would have represented a serious violation that would probably have pushed the investigations by the FBI and the national security division of the Department of Justice.

Yet so far, neither the attorney general, Pam Bondi, nor the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, seem to plan to investigate whether the communications described in A bomb report in the Atlantic magazine Monday Federal laws such as Spionage Act potentially violated.

The office and the department have undertaken this type of investigation to understand the extent of the damage to the country’s national security, discover other cases of unconsciousness and examine whether the laws have been broken. This investigation would be independent of much more in-depth in-the internal revision of self-political by the National Security Council announced Tuesday.

What Mrs. Bondi and Mr. Patel do after is an important initial test for two officials who promised during their confirmation hearings to administer justice in a impartial and free way by political considerations that, in their opinion, led to Trump’s criminal proceedings during the Biden administration.

“This is something that would normally be investigated by the FBI and the Doj,” said Mary McCord, a high -date high officer for the Department of Justice that now teaches the Georgetown University Law Center.

“Even if a person is in the legal possession of the information on national defense, putting it on reporting – which is not an approved and safe means to communicate this information – public ministries could determine that it was a serious negligence, which is a crime,” said McCord.

The FBI could open an investigation into the episode if it had been treated as the mistreatment of classified information, formerly federal law enforcement officers said that they worked espionage cases. But the administration insisted on the fact that the information has not been classified, complicating the potential for any criminal investigation. The congress could also refer to the Department of Justice.

Speaking to the White House, Mr. Trump seemed to recognize the investigation in progress by the National Security Council, but quickly added: “It is not exactly something from the FBI”.

The Department of Justice and the FBI work independently, but in tandem on these investigations: only after the Bureau has concluded that its investigation would have determined the officials of the department determine if the accusations were guaranteed.

Patel, speaking to an audition of the Senate Tuesday, said he had been informed on the matter, but he did not say if the office would have opened a formal investigation. An FBI spokesman refused to comment.

A spokesman for Mrs. Bondi refused to comment if he would have authorized an investigation into the sharing of sensitive secrets on the signal by his companions members of the cabinet.

Tuesday, the representative Dan Goldman, Democrat of New York, invited Mrs. Bondi to appoint a special consultant to investigate the signal group, claiming that her status as a member of the Cabinet of Mr. Trump made it impossible for her “conduct an investigation without the appearance of a conflict of interest”.

The Department of Justice, under Mrs. Bondi, has been willing to publicly recognize the investigations that involve what political leadership sees how bad management of the classified information. Last week, Todd Blanche, deputy attorney general, has announced a criminal investigation In the “selective loss of inaccurate information, but nevertheless classified” on the efforts to expel the members of a Venezuelan band.

On Monday, the editor’s editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he was inadvertently included in a signal group chat that shared the highly sensitive details of a Imminent attack on the insurgents Houthi In Yemen this year, organized by Michael Waltz, Councilor for National Security of Trump.

Among the other participants: Vice -president JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard, director of the National Hallulim. Mrs. Bondi apparently was not invited.

The dilemma faced by Mrs. Bondi and Mr. Patel, both straight out of Surrogates for Mr. Trump during the 2024 campaign, added importance, given their maximalist approach to the punishment of political opponents who have improperly manage the national security secrets.

Both Mrs. Bondi and Mr. Patel, together with most of the participants in Signal’s chat, were among those who said that former state secretary Hillary Clinton should have been pursued for the use of a private email server to discuss government issues a decade ago.

“Hillary Clinton has actually committed a crime through its management of classified documents and was previously exonerated-a two-level judicial system”, wrote Patel in his book “Government Gangster”, published in 2023.

In one of his first apparitions on the national political phase, in 2016, Mrs. Bondi, then Prosecutor General of Florida, crogified himself in anti-clinton songs during a speech at the National Republican Convention in Cleveland.

“Bloccali!” Mrs. Bondi said, echoing the public. “I love it!”

While the signal is a encrypted program, its use is explicitly prohibited in A memo of the Department of Defense of 2023 Which prohibits “non -DOD messaging systems” and “non -classified systems, emitted by the government or in other way, for the classified national security information”.

During an audition Tuesday, Mrs. Gabbard said she did not believe that the information shared in the messages was classified. The director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, claimed that Mr. Hegseth said that the information was not classified, although he added that he had no way to verify the statements of Mr. Hegseth.

On Tuesday Mr. Trump also echoed to those statements to the White House.

But the former officials who managed highly sensitive information said that the reported description of the military objectives, the weapons to be used and the sequence and times of the strikes on the Houthi sites discussed in the group chat would probably have involved classified material, whether it was marked in that way or not.

It is not clear whether the assertions of Mr. Trump’s national security officials count. Under the 1917 Spionic ActSensitive information should not be classified so that its evils are a crime. The law was written before the modern classified information system and instead covers carefully defense information that could damage the United States or help a foreign opponent if disclosed.

However, in the modern era, such information is generally classified and is rare – but uninitiated – For the Department of Justice to pursue people to mistreat un classified information.

The former public ministries said that the decision not to investigate, not to mention the accusations, could give future defendants in case of losses a base to affirm that they had been pursued selectively.

The statements of the members of the Chat of Signal – according to which no classified information had been shared – have echo of the defense mounted by Mrs. Clinton’s team, which has maintained that the information in the E -mail on her private server has not been marked and that much of it derived from publicly available sources. Subsequent investigations found that a handful of messages had some signs that indicated the lowest classification form.

The FBI agents who examined the tests did not agree with the arguments made by Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers, noting that the information, although overwhelmingly not markedly classified, was classified by her very nature because it discussed sensitive issues.

Evidence in case Including e -mail chains that discussed to get to US drones shots in Pakistan, a highly classified national security program.

The Clinton team tried to minimize the severity of the investigations, calling it a revision of security. But it was, in fact, a serious criminal investigation. At the time, the FBI began to examine the and -mail after receiving a reference from the general inspector of the Intelligence community.

The description of the Goldberg material included in Signal’s chat – which described as a “war plan” against the Houthi – suggests that at least some of the discussed information was comparably sensitive.

Revealing these plans before a strike could have endangered American troops. For former FBI officials who worked on cases of losses they described it as a devastating violation of national security, and former national security officials have said that if personal cell phones were used, it may have exposed the participants to Continuing the hacking efforts by the Chinese and Russian. Reports show that at least one of the participants He was in Moscow at the time.

Other conversations in the group chat may also be considered classified because they involved the internal assessments of US officials of relations with foreign countries, in particular in Europe. When these discussions occur within the government channels, they are often considered classified.

Patel had made a campaign for Mr. Trump, promising to restore the NEW REPUTATION, which he believed had been damaged by the investigations on Mr. Trump, including one who was based on the law on espionage.

In “Government Gangster”, Patel wrote: “If people in authority do not face consequences when they break the rules, then they will break the rules. Worse still, when people are encouraged to break the rules, they still and still broke them.”

Eric Schmitt AND Robert Jimison Contributed relationships.