JD Vance Sent Late-Night “U Up?” Text After Signal Messages Leaked
JD Vance hit up his buddies in the Signal chat used to coordinate bombing Yemen with a late-night plea for companionship—hours after the chat’s existence was revealed to the public by Atlantic editor Jeff Goldberg.
“This chat’s kind of dead,” Vance texted at 2:26 a.m. “Anything going on?”
A report from the Pentagon inspector general released Thursday reveals new details about what the chat’s members did in the days and hours after March 24, when Goldberg published that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had inadvertently texted him classified information about the Trump administration’s war plans.
The vice president’s “u up?”-style message, which we are generously reading as a joke, was sent in the wee hours of the morning of March 25.
Where Vance chose to make light of the possible treason, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared to have another aim: to cover the group’s tracks. According to the screenshot, Bessent shortened the time it would take for messages to disappear from the chat to eight hours. Goldberg reported that the messages had previously been set to disappear after either one or four weeks, already a potential violation of federal law.
Other officials changed their profile names: Secretary of State Marco Rubio changed his screen name from “MAR” to “MR,” CIA Director John Ratfcliffe shortened his name to simply “John,” and deputy chief of staff Sephen Miller, “S M,” changed his name to “SM 76.”
It’s unclear why these obviously identifiable (and already identified) officials would change their names, or attempt to make their messages disappear faster—the photo of the chat from the report was taken on March 27, leaving only a day for fast-deleting messages to be sent and then erased—but they obviously were scrambling.