I’ve covered a lot of security failures. This is a security failure of terrifying proportions. Armed insurgents breached and occupied the Capitol. They’re still there. The failure hasn’t ended.
Shane Harris
22.2K posts
Shane Harris
@shaneharris
Staff Writer @theatlantic. Author. Podcaster. Filmmaker. linktr.ee/shaneharris Signal: shaneharris.64
Washington, DC
Joined July 2009
- In 25 years of covering national security, I’ve never seen a story like this: Senior Trump officials discussed planning for the U.S. attack on the Houthis in a Signal group--and inadvertently added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
- GOP members are trying to shame Cohen, which seems futile at this rock-bottom point in his life, and impugn his credibility, which gains little, since Cohen has already admitted he lied about some things. What no member has done: Try to show that Cohen's testimony today is false.
- This reporting blows a hole in the idea that Trump is a political strategist, thinking many steps ahead. He is impulsive. That those impulses are sometimes politically disastrous.
- “The White House’s handling of the period between the first known symptoms—those of Hicks on Wednesday—and the president’s infection, which was confirmed about 1 a.m. Friday, is what experts considered a case study in irresponsibility and mismanagement.”
- New: The whistleblower complaint alleges a pattern of obfuscation at the White House, in which officials moved the records of some of Trump’s communications with foreign officials onto a separate computer network from where they are normally stored.
- Worth taking a deep breath re: Putin putting his nuclear forces on alert. Current and former officials I'm talking to are not alarmed. They've heard threats like this from him before. No one's being cavalier, but it's important not to overreact to his provocations and signals.
- In the last 24 hours, we have learned that the FBI has investigated whether the president is an agent of Russia, and that he took steps to conceal his conversations with the president of Russia.
- NEW: Brian Murphy, the DHS official whose office compiled "intelligence reports" about the work of journalists and protestors, has been removed from his job.
- New: The White House and the Saudi royal family are searching for an explanation for Khashoggi's death that avoids implicating MBS. That's going to be difficult, as mounting evidence points to the crown prince's connection to Khashoggis' disappearance.
- Some personal news. I'm sad to report that my beloved father, Ed Harris, died on Sunday. He'd been ill for some time and developed an acute lung infection last week. I've shared remembrances of him with family and friends, but in this space, I just want to add two things.
- NEW: "Unmasking" probe commissioned by Barr quietly concludes without charges or any public report washingtonpost.com/national-secur… By @mattzap and me
- This notion that Steele’s memos triggered the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign persists, even after a whole team WSJ reporters, me included, found that it’s just not true.The Dossier Rehab Campaign wsj.com/articles/the-d…
- New: U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic. washingtonpost.com/national-secur… by me, @gregpmiller, @jdawsey1, @nakashimae, @yabutaleb7
