White House Chief of Staff phone hacked and it's not a joke
News that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles phone was hacked proves again why our anger and worry about Signalgate is justified
Author’s Note: This is the LAST DAY in our huge ‘It’s May’ discount sale! We’ve added paid subscriber benefits! It’s our most generous ever with 25% off all paid subscriptions….forever! I hope you’ll jump on this opportunity and join us by midnight tonight!
More than an embarrassing little ‘oops’
The Wall Street Journal broke the news on Thursday that White House Chief of Staff Susie ‘The Adult in the Room’ Wiles appears to have had her phone hacked by someone who has since been sending messages to officials impersonating her.
From the story by Joshua Dawsey:
Federal authorities are investigating a clandestine effort to impersonate White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, according to people familiar with the matter, after an unknown individual reached out to prominent Republicans and business executives pretending to be her.
In recent weeks, senators, governors, top U.S. business executives and other well-known figures have received text messages and phone calls from a person who claimed to be the chief of staff, the people familiar with the messages said.
But the messages weren’t from Wiles—and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the White House are trying to figure out who is behind the effort and what the goal is, according to some of the people. FBI officials have told the White House they don’t believe a foreign nation is involved, some of the people said.
The hacker has been very busy repeatedly messaging her vast list of political contacts both in D.C. and Florida. Wiles has been a Republican political operative for decades and has deep ties in those circles. In addition, her role as Chief of Staff is connected to nearly every aspect of managing the federal government.
Obviously, they are taking this massive breach of security seriously….right?
Nah…this is the Trump Administration.
Wiles has urged some of her contacts to disregard the messages, and she has apologized for the inconvenience. But some of the people who were contacted engaged with the impersonator before realizing it wasn’t Wiles. Many others have reached out to Wiles, asking if she is behind the messages before responding, some of the people said.
The impersonator has continued sending messages in recent days, including while Wiles was out of the country this month with Trump in the Middle East. Some White House advisers have privately joked about how busy the impersonator seems to be.
Hilarious! One of the most powerful people in the country got her phone hacked and boy is that hacker busy! I’m telling you…these guys know a good joke when they see one.
Don’t worry folks. The FBI under Kash ‘Money’ Patel is all over it.
“The FBI takes all threats against the president, his staff, and our cybersecurity with the utmost seriousness,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement. “Safeguarding our administration officials’ ability to securely communicate to accomplish the president’s mission is a top priority.”
Cybersecurity as a top priority
If they take our cybersecurity with the utmost seriousness as he claims it’s kind of surprising since we know already that this Administration thinks cybersecurity is a joke.
It hasn’t even been two months since ‘Signalgate’ hit the news as we learned that all of the senior leaders of the Administration are using their personal phones to exchange messages in Signal groups set up for every single project. We have not heard a single change in policy or any indication they aren’t still using it to hide their conversations.
As a matter of fact, after they “promoted” former National Security Advisor Mike Walz just a month ago, he was seen using a Signal clone app that is able to archive messages openly in the Cabinet Room.
As far as investigating these kind of security breaches in the Administration, we got word this week from the Guardian that the White House has lost faith in Pete Hegseth’s investigation of the alleged “leak” of Panama Canal invasion plans. Hegseth accused his own aides of leaking the plans to a reporter but it appears his personal attorney told people that they had used illegal National Security Agency wiretaps to look at their phones.
When I say "illegal” I mean…really illegal. The NSA isn’t supposed to be even able to tap U.S. phones or conduct domestic surveillance at all. (Hello…remember that whole ass thing with Edward Snowden?) But, they work for Hegseth soooo….
Why it all matters
So, having said all that, its reasonable to believe that Susie Wiles phone includes the Signal app, or its clone TeleMessage. The White House said that Signal was an approved app. We can also reasonably assume that there are dozens of conversations about everything from Yemen to the Big Ugly Bill on her phone.
You might recall that Signal is a text messaging app using top of the line encryption. It is difficult to intercept but the number one way to get access to Signal messages is simple.
Get control or access to a user’s device.
Device Compromise:
Spyware or Malware: If a user's phone or computer is infected with spyware or malware, an attacker could potentially access Signal messages, even though the messages are encrypted.
Physical Access: If someone gains physical access to a user's unlocked device, they could read messages or potentially compromise the Signal app directly, according to Kaspersky.
So, at this point we don’t know what really happened to Wiles phone at all. She has told colleagues that ‘someone was able to hack her contacts’ allegedly. What does that even mean? How did they get that? Did they phish her? Was it a cloning of her device? Has it been secured or locked out since then?
If the hacker is supposedly still contacting people they may very well have more access to her phone than we know and they aren’t telling us the truth. There is absolutely no reason we should believe anything this Administration says about it since it’s clear they approve of these secret uses of their phones to hide information from the public.
They don’t care about the Presidential Records Act or any other law. Rules are for the little people.
Once again we have every reason to believe our national security secrets are in the hands of malign actors and, once again, the Trump Administration is hiding it from us.
Will they care when one of our service members gets killed? When an aircraft carrier gets sunk?
No. They will blame Biden.
It never fucking ends with these people.
If you missed it, I had a fantastic conversation with Dr. Eli Merritt, an history professor from Vanderbilt and nationally recognized expert on the Declaration of Independence and Revolution for On Democracy with FPWellman on MeidasTouch last night. Stephen Miller is trying to turn us back into a royal kingdom and we had a whole ass revolution about that 250 years ago. Check it out.
Can the morons in the White House do anything right???
I heard Hegseth will soon be out. Suzie is kicking him out. 🤞😂🇺🇸