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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Report: Trump Officials Accidentally Texted War Plans To Reporter; Appeals Court Weighs Trump's Use Of Alien Enemies Act. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired March 24, 2025 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[16:00:04]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Maybe the next person --

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: They just turned the plane.

SANCHEZ: -- next flight. Yeah. Or he goes in the -- he or she goes on the way back. I don't know.

KEILAR: They might have gone through these possibilities, but it seemed in the end that it was not a good idea to give that a try.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. Hey, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. It was an afternoon packed full of news. Got to add Brianna to the group chat if you're out there.

"THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT" starts right now.

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KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: It's secrets versus security.

Let's head into THE ARENA.

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HUNT: Right now, the White House scrambling to contain the damage, acknowledging the authenticity of a report saying top officials including the vice president of the United States and the secretary of defense, accidentally texted war plans to a reporter.

Here live this hour, President Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton.

Also breaking this hour, what one judge is calling unprecedented territory. Another tense court hearing, putting the spotlight on mass deportations. CNN is inside the room as an appeals court weighs just how much authority to give the president. We'll talk about it all with the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

(MUSIC)

HUNT: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt.

Welcome to THE ARENA. It's wonderful to have you with us on this Monday. And it is quite a Monday.

The Trump administration now confirming that a stunning leak of secret military battle plans appears to be authentic after the top editor for "The Atlantic" revealed he was accidentally included in a Signal group chat about recent U.S. strikes in Yemen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: All right. This breaking news just in to CNN. The U.S. has begun to carry out decisive military action against Houthi targets in Yemen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So you saw the timestamp there, right? CNN broke in with news of the strikes around 2:50 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, March 15th. But a top "Atlantic" editor, the top "Atlantic" editor, Jeffrey Goldberg. Yeah, he knew the attack was going to happen hours before that.

In the bombshell story out today, Goldberg says he got an early heads up when, quote, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. Goldberg says the plan included, quote, precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing. Goldberg says he didn't think it could be real, but he decided that he would stay on the chat long enough to find out.

Goldberg writes this, quote, according to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence at 1:45 p.m. Eastern Time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed.

At about 1:55, Goldberg says, he checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sana'a, the capital city. Goldberg says he largely avoided quoting directly from the texts, but he did make a point of noting that the Trump national security advisor, Michael Waltz, described the operation as an amazing job and added, these three emojis.

Goldberg says all of this ultimately convinced him that the attack was real. The chat was real, and he decided he shouldn't stay part of it any longer. This was a stunning leak, a massive breach of operational security conducted on a commercial messaging platform on phones that could be easily lost or stolen.

CNN covering every angle of this story this afternoon. Our chief national affairs correspondent, Jeff Zeleny, is at the White House.

We're going to start, though, with CNN chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt, because, of course, Alex, this is a stunning breach of national security.

Explain what happened and what it means.

ALEXANDER MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: And a revelation of classified information, at least to Jeffrey Goldberg, real insight into how these decisions are made. Essentially, Kasie, several days before that strike on March 15th, Jeffrey Goldberg was invited to join this group chat by the national security advisor, Mike Waltz, who clearly thought he was someone else.

Goldberg joined some 18 others in that chat. The highest echelon of national security officials in the country, including the secretaries of defense and state, the director of national intelligence, the director of the CIA.

And in the following days, they proceeded to have a debate over whether this strike against the Houthis on March 15th should happen. There was actually some pushback from the vice president, J.D. Vance, who told the others, I think that we're making a mistake.

But then he deferred to the group after there was some back and forth, and he told Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, if you think we should do it, let's go.

Now, in that back and forth, we also saw, according to Goldberg, that the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, he included some information that might have been related to current intelligence operations.

So highly classified, Kasie. Goldberg did not report on that because of the sensitivities.

[16:05:02]

And then come the morning of the strikes on March 15th, two hours prior, there was that update that you referenced from Pete Hegseth to the others. And mind you, the President Trump was at Mar-a-Lago that morning with Waltz and with Rubio, and he gave all kinds of information on Signal about the targets, the weaponry and the sequence of the attacks, how all of this would unfold.

Now, after these strikes took place, there was some celebration, some rejoicing on this group chat. John Ratcliffe again, the CIA director, calling it a good start. Marco Rubio chiming in, saying good job to Pete Hegseth and your team.

So, major questions now, Kasie, about not just how Goldberg was invited to this. What mistake was made, but really on the legal front, what laws were broken? What violations of the Espionage Act were there? These are the kinds of questions that they're going to be -- that they're going to have to answer. And a lot of those questions are going to come tomorrow morning. The Senate intelligence committee is having a hearing on the annual worldwide threats report. And you can be sure that those top intelligence officials will be getting a lot of questions about this extraordinary report -- Kasie.

HUNT: Indeed.

And, Jeff Zeleny, to that last point, Alex was making, what is the White House saying about whether laws were broken here?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, they are being quite clear that this is actually was actually a conversation that was being had by the top national security officials. They are not questioning the -- the legitimacy of the messages. And -- but there is a scramble underway behind the scenes here to figure out, A, how this became public. And, B, why this conversation happened in this format in the first time.

At the -- at the same time, even as they're trying to diminish any sense of concern. But let's look at the National Security Council's statement on this. So really stating quite clearly that they stand by the -- the reporting in, in terms of the -- the -- the authentic-ness of the message chain there, you're seeing, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.

This is a very interesting line here. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. Never mind the fact that this was held in an unclassified nature there. But the president was also asked about this a short time ago here at the White House. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of "The Atlantic". It's to me, it's a magazine that's going out of business. I think it's not much of a magazine, but I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had what?

REPORTER: They were using Signal to coordinate on sensitive materials, and --

TRUMP: Having to do with what? Having to do with what? What were they talking about?

REPORTER: With the Houthis.

TRUMP: The Houthis? You mean the attack on the Houthis?

REPORTER: Yes.

TRUMP: Well, it couldn't have been very effective because the attack was very effective, I can tell you that. I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So saying for three times there. I don't know anything about it.

Whether in fact that is an accurate encapsulation of events. We shall see. But the reality here is this -- the president had a few hours to be briefed on this. If he was not, he was saying he was hearing about it for the first time. But that's sort of beside the point here. There is a scramble among officials to figure out how Jeffrey Goldberg was added to it, but then a broader conversation just about the fact that this conversation was happening at all, and the fact that no one on that chain, including the White House chief of staff and others, said anything at all during this conversation. So, Kasie, this is certainly one of the biggest breaches of protocol

and officials I've talked to from previous administrations of both parties are stunned by all of this. One Republican who actually hopes the Trump administration does well, he called it amateur hour.

HUNT: Really, really quite remarkable. And to your point, Jeff, sometimes officials do -- I mean, this is a president who we know reads the banners on all the TV networks that are on throughout the White House. And we've seen many officials say that they hadn't yet been briefed on something. We'll see if they're just buying time before he has to respond.

Alex, Jeff, thanks very much for starting us off.

And our panelists here, CNN political national security analyst David Sanger, CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel, the former Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, and Democratic California Congresswoman Sara Jacobs. Welcome to all of you on what has turned out to be quite the Monday.

Jamie Gangel, let me start with you because, I mean, honestly, as we were kind of ticking through this -- I mean, it's hard to even know where to start. I know you have been talking to intelligence officials all day. What have you, and they been zeroing in on?

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So I just want to say, I've spoken to two very high ranking former intelligence officials, both of whom worked for Republicans. And they both said that they were stunned, along with everybody else, that there is no defense that this could have happened and that someone should be fired.

[16:10:02]

So let me just give you a couple of quotes. I asked, would you ever set up communication like this on a commercial app? Absolutely not. They're secure video conferencing. This is not the way it's done. Quote: They broke every procedure known to man about protecting operational material before a military strike. The lack of operational security and stupidity is just stunning.

HUNT: David Sanger?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL & NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it is, as Jamie and I were discussing before you, you don't know whether to laugh or cry about this one, right?

HUNT: And there are plenty of other emojis we could put on the screen to underscore the degree of this.

SANGER: The laughter part is that an editor, a great reporter known to us all, was mistakenly put on this -- on this list.

HUNT: Thankfully, he seems to be a very loyal American.

SANGER: Yes, seems to be and is. The cry part is there is a procedure for this. There are these

elaborate systems that the United States has spent billions of dollars to build over the years to deal with classified information. And if this was reversed, if it was a Democratic administration, I suspect you'd be hearing something different from some of the Republicans you've heard now.

And the reason I suspect that is they rightly went after Hillary Clinton in 2016 for using classified, engaging in classified conversations over her home server and home phone.

Now, Signal is somewhat more secure. It's used widely across Washington and around the world, but it's not supposed to be used for this. And that gets to the criminal piece of this, which is if you put classified information deliberately in a non-classified space, that's where the Espionage Act investigation kicks in.

HUNT: Yeah. So lets flashback, shall we, to 2016, when Jim Comey, then FBI director, had this to say in the summer about Hillary Clinton's use of private email to communicate classified information.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. So that takes us to the partisan side of the table.

Governor Sununu, how do you -- I mean, if you're a Republican now trying to defend this administration, I mean, how can you do it with a straight face?

CHRIS SUNUNU (R), FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE GOVERNOR: Well, I don't think anyone's defending what happened. I mean, to their credit, they're owning it. They came out and said, this happened.

And I think you bring up a good point. You have to figure out why was Goldberg included in the first place? Is Signal appropriate? It's encrypted, but is an appropriate method. And what was put on there, right, in terms of the -- not the validity but the legality of what was put on there? Should that have even been communicated at all?

The best thing you can do in a situation? Own it, own every bit of it. Say we completely made a mistake. We're going to change our protocols. We're going to have internal review processes.

If you try to dodge or avoid any of this, it just -- it's not going to go well. So hats off to them for kind of admitting it up front. But I think they just need to take the next steps and be super transparent about everything that happened. HUNT: Well, and so one thing that has just -- this just in. I've been

watching for this all afternoon, honestly, because I covered the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton's campaign at this time, she has written this on X.

There's another emoji. It's like the whole thing. We could have this whole conversation emoji, she says. You've got to be kidding me.

Sara -- Congresswoman?

REP. SARA JACOBS (D-CA): Yes. I mean, look, I think there's a few things that concern me about this. First, yes. How did Jeffrey Goldberg get on there? But actually, why were they having this conversation on signal to begin with? What other conversations have they been having on commercial applications that they didn't accidentally send to a reporter that we know nothing about?

And thirdly, and most importantly, these kinds of operational details, I sit on the Armed Services Committee. We don't even get these kinds of this detailed level of operations until after the fact, because it is so important for our service members safety that this is kept so tightly held.

And so they are directly putting our service members at risk through this. It's not just some amorphous operational security, it is the people I represent in San Diego who are putting their lives on the line for our country, who they're treating this kind of information about with such callousness.

HUNT: That's the crying part of this, because it is. I mean, it is very real.

Here was Senator Chuck Schumer, who, you know, has been in the barrel for his own political challenges. But this is what he's saying about it here just in the last hour or so.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): This kind of carelessness is how people get killed. It's how our enemies can take advantage of us. It's how our national security falls into danger. If you were up in arms over unsecured -- if you were up in arms over unsecured emails years ago, you should certainly be outraged by this amateurish behavior.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, Governor, what do you think the remedy should be here?

[16:15:00]

I mean, should someone be fired?

SUNUNU: Well, I guess -- I guess we're going to find out, like, who was involved in all the different steps. And like I said, they got to be super transparent.

My question is like, when did they realize that Goldberg was like, were they sitting there, unsend unsend?

HUNT: Well --

SUNUNU: Like, we've all had bad tweets and bad texts, but you know, when did when did kind of --

HUNT: Well, he says -- he says in the story for our viewers who may not have read the whole thing so far, that he doesn't think they ever really figured it out until perhaps when he exited the chat, and they would have gotten a little notification that said JG has departed, but that was just his initials, David Sanger.

SANGER: That's right. And you know, you can imagine how adding Jeff Goldberg to the list could have happened accidentally. We've all, like, typed in the wrong email address and, you know, gives you nightmares just to go think about that. That would be, you know, an accident.

Putting this level of detail before an operation goes in. That's the one that I think that's going to be the crux of the investigation or should be. And there, you had Pete Hegseth, who was obviously new to all of this, doing it, but others were on the -- the chain, including Susie Wiles, the, the chief of staff, White House chief of staff.

GANGEL: Can I just say this is not the way you conduct national security on the Signal app?

First of all, Signal is more secure than some of the other apps out there, but it is not completely secure. This is why you have the White House signal office. Connect everybody together. Your father could -- could talk about what this is like.

HUNT: The former White House chief of staff.

(CROSSTALK)

GANGEL: The former White House chief of staff.

(LAUGHTER)

SUNUNU: Texting back in '91 about that. I don't think they had texting.

GANGEL: Well, this is why they're secure video conferencing, why there are calls. You do not do this on Signal, end of story.

HUNT: Can I -- David, can I actually ask you a question? Because I know you and I have been on talking about some of the reporting you've done around Salt Typhoon, which is this Chinese operation that is really inside people's cell phones. And J.D. Vance was swept up in that. Was he not?

SANGER: As was the president we think. HUNT: Right.

And so would the Chinese have been able to read this if it was on J.D. Vance's signal?

SANGER: Probably not. Because what the Chinese got into in Salt Typhoon was the regular phone system we all use. And the remedy for that is to move to a encrypted app like Signal.

And so but there are some cases we have seen in the past of nation states that have gotten actually inside the firmware of your phone, and there, it could necessarily pose a risk after Signal is sort of on an unencrypted this data.

SUNUNU: But to be fair, theoretically, I mean, that could happen to any phone call.

SANGER: Yes.

SUNUNU: I mean, if you're talking about that level of breach, that could be any phone call, any text. I mean, they have to be able to call and text each other at some level.

JACOBS: Well, yes, but this, this kind of, this kind of level of detail should be on the top secret -- should be on the top secret system, which exists for the purpose of sending top secret information and is even extra secure so that you aren't worried that someone has access to your phone.

GANGEL: Can I just have one thing quickly, and that is that this also speaks to a question of does this administration trust the system? Have they just given up on normal NSC intelligence (ph) call?

HUNT: Or do they just not know how to use it? I mean, which is it?

GANGEL: I mean, you would hope that there would be people at the NSC who still know how to put a group together.

SANGER: They used it in the first term, in the first Trump term, you know, so and Signal --

SUNUNU: Signal is widely used. It's super encrypted and its widely used, I think to your point. And it's a valid point. Maybe some of this information should have been broadcast in any form on any -- on --

HUNT: I think that is the basic point.

SUNUNU: Well, you walk into -- you walk into the office.

JACOBS: This is what the Situation Room is literally built for and designed for. And they have a whole system of protocols around.

SANGER: And to communicate on secure phones that aren't running on the normal system. You walk into the office of somebody who's in the national security chain. You usually see two computers. One is what they call a low side for, you know, sending emails to all of us. And one is on the high side for simply being in national security territory.

What they were doing here was they were taking high side material, classified material and putting it on your everyday phone and that on a -- on an encrypted app.

HUNT: And just to be clear, that is against the law, right?

SANGER: As far as I know. I mean, you know, the law was written before encrypted apps existed and so forth, and I'm not sure how much it's been tested here, but you are not supposed to take that anywhere except in the approved channel.

HUNT: Last word.

JACOBS: I worked at the State Department, and before you get access to this classified information you have -- you get told, here's how you're allowed to use it to literally bring it outside. You have to wrap it twice before you can bring it anywhere, right? So like they had to have been briefed on the rules of classified information before they were given access.

HUNT: You would think so.

Okay. Up next, some members of Congress already calling for an investigation into this text chain debacle.

[16:20:02]

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, the Congressman Jamie Raskin, will be live here in THE ARENA.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: All right. Welcome back into THE ARENA.

The remarkable account in the Atlantic of a reporter accidentally added to a Signal group chat where national security officials planned military strikes on Yemen. It's more than just a gripping story, a serious blunder.

The article raises serious legal implications for all of these national security officials.

Joining us now is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin.

[16:25:00]

Sir, thanks very much for being on the show.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): You bet.

HUNT: So let's start right there. Did this group chat break the law? RASKIN: Well, most certainly it did. And it reflects a general

sloppiness and negligence in the whole approach of the administration as they've gotten started here. They've been struck down more than 40 different times by federal courts with temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions, because they've acted in such a cavalier disregard of what the rule of law requires. And this example you're pointing to, Kasie, obviously, is with respect to operational implementation of some plans.

But if you look at what the underlying plan was, it's Congress that declares war on Venezuela or on Yemen. It's not the president of the United States. So it's both this tremendous operational negligence and sloppiness that has been shown, but also the idea that they act in complete defiance of what the Constitution says and what the rule of law stands for.

HUNT: Well, I mean, this is not, of course, the first time that the U.S. has launched strikes along these lines. It certainly is not just Republican administrations that have that have done that. But, Congressman Hillary Clinton, of course, lost an election in part because of criticism around her handling of classified information.

How do you expect Republicans to respond to what we've learned about how it was being handled by the current secretary of defense and others?

RASKIN: Well, it'll be child's play to go back and find all of the Republicans who were demanding congressional investigations and that Hillary Clinton apologize and leave the campaign and so on, based over her handling of the information, most of which was not classified, I think.

This was clearly classified and of an extremely sensitive and significant nature. So I would hope that they would at least acknowledge the emergency that is represented by virtue of these kinds of practices, and they would try to tighten them up.

But again, you know, I don't want to overly focus on the operational, because even today, we've got an opinion from Judge Boasberg saying that the administration was acting completely outside of the law when it decided to deport people without giving them due process, individualized hearings in accordance with the Immigration and Naturalization Act.

HUNT: Yeah, well, and in fact, that was what I wanted to ask you about next. The judge in the hearing that you referenced, it played out today. The judge referred to the last time the act that was used, the Alien Enemies Act as quote -- and these are his words. Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act. And he, of course, was then referring to these Venezuelan migrants who were deported.

Do you agree with that assessment?

RASKIN: Well, actually, I haven't studied exactly how Nazis were rounded up and whether they were given individualized hearings, but certainly that's what American due process requires. Now, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act says that the presidents got the power to deport people who are enemy foreign nationals. That is, they are citizens of a foreign country that were at war with.

Of course, we're not at war with Venezuela. They've not invaded us. But even if we were at war with them, they would have a right under this statute to a due process hearing.

I don't know what took place during World War II. So I would like to do some more research into that. In any event, they are guaranteed that kind of due process hearing under the statute and under the Constitution of the United States. We don't know who got shipped off. And you've got all of these lawyers coming in on behalf of particular people who are put on the plane saying they were not gangbangers, they were not part of this gang, and so on.

So we don't know who's there. That's why, you know, two of the most beautiful words in the English language are due process, so we can actually figure it out.

HUNT: Congressman, you -- of course, in the first Trump administration were heavily involved in pushing back against some of the things the then president was doing. You were obviously very involved in impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. There has been a lot of frustration now that you've seen from the democratic base about how Democrats have been pushing back against President Trump.

This time there was a meeting, reportedly, Nancy Pelosi sat down with the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, told him to use his power. Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, under incredible pressure.

Based on what you saw happen, do you think Chuck Schumer should step down?

RASKIN: Oh, gee, Kasie, I don't want to weigh in on that. And for this reason, I don't want to be -- I don't want to get in the habit of attacking other democrats right now.

[16:30:03]

Our democracy is under siege. And as we've seen, dozens of actions by the Trump administration have been struck down in federal court as a violation of the Constitution and the rule of law. We need everybody together. And I agree, all of us could be doing a better job.

I'm working seven days a week on this. I was just in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I was in my own district. I was in the eastern shore. I was in Hamilton County, Ohio. I'm going everywhere. And I think most democrats feel the same way.

We will go anywhere to fight to defend democracy and freedom at this point. And I know, I understand everybody's got a job to do. I'm just not that drawn to the palace intrigue stories. We're really in the fight of our lives right now. HUNT: All right. Very briefly, sir, your Democratic colleague,

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, said, quote, all I want for my birthday is for Elon to be taken down, referring to Elon Musk. The attorney general connected those comments to a tax on Tesla, and she says, quote, of Crockett -- she needs to tread very carefully.

Is that a threat?

RASKIN: It sounds like it is. And they're certainly making those kinds of threats against Democrats all over the place. I mean, what's so interesting is how extremely literal minded they can get when Democrats are using common metaphorical parlance to talk about political struggle. But when Donald Trump says, you got to go and fight and you got to fight like hell, or you won't have a country anymore to a mob of tens of thousands of people that he summoned and directs them over to the Capitol, they think that that's purely abstract and metaphorical language.

So I could take it a little bit more seriously if they used one standard for adjudicating political rhetoric.

HUNT: All right. Congressman Jamie Raskin, very grateful to have you on the show, sir. Thanks very much for being here.

RASKIN: You bet, Kasie.

HUNT: All right. Up next, we will talk to someone who has been in those conversations, planning for war, including conversations that include included President Trump. The former national security adviser, John Bolton, will be here live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:36:26]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

More now on the fallout from our top story, the Trump administration confirming a stunning leak of secret military battle plans in a signal group chat.

I want to bring in now, the former national security advisor in President Trump's first term, John Bolton.

Ambassador Bolton, thanks very much for being on the show.

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Glad to be with you.

HUNT: So let's just start with this. What was your reaction to learning about these secret plans being communicated in this signal group chat?

BOLTON: Well, I was shocked, and I really I was. Without words and I say that not -- not because I'm more virtuous than anybody who was in that -- that group. I just couldn't imagine it was happening. I couldn't imagine anybody

would use Signal.

You know, some of the guests have commented that Signal's highly encrypted. I'll just say this, if you think Signal, is equivalent to U.S. government secure telecommunications, think again.

So all the consequences you've been discussing are obviously going to be enormously important, but I just can't, to this moment, get over the idea that during the days that group was going on, not one of the participants said we shouldn't be doing this on Signal.

HUNT: Sir, do you know of anything like this happening in Trump's first term?

BOLTON: I'm certainly not aware of it. I mean, I didn't even use the government's unclassified or classified email systems that much. Most of the things that were covered in what was recorded in "The Atlantic" article should have been discussed in the Situation Room, in a principals committee meeting, or a full NSC chaired by the president.

It looks to me like this was a typical Donald Trump decision. Let's bomb the Houthis that then everybody raced to implement without talking about the implications, including, for example, Vice President Vance apparently on this chain saying, I don't agree with this.

Why are they discussing it after the decision is made? That -- that alone shows what's -- what's wrong with what's going on here? Ultimately, if people can attend the situation room, you're on a secure government line. You're not on WhatsApp or Signal, and some of these issues, honestly, it's old fashioned, I know, but they should only be discussed face to face where people can have it out if they have a disagreement, not on an email chain.

HUNT: Sir, do you think somebody should be fired over this?

BOLTON: Listen, Donald Trump's not going to fire anybody unless he thinks this redounds to his personal detriment. And we'll see what happens.

HUNT: Do you think that this is worse than what Hillary Clinton did with her private email in 2016? I know you were very critical then.

BOLTON: Yeah, I was very critical then. And, you know, we call this process learning that when somebody does something like what she did, whether she deserved to be prosecuted or anything else that goes into the memory and the body politic, how can you then turn around and conduct? Let's forget the classification issue. How can you conduct official government business over a non-official channel?

Maybe there's some in extremis situation when you're -- you're on Samoa or something and there aren't any official channels.

[16:40:03]

But it's -- they were -- they were in Washington, probably in their offices. I just -- as I say -- I -- words fail me here. I cannot even imagine this happening.

HUNT: Sir, do you think that Trump administration officials broke the law when they had this Signal chat?

BOLTON: You know, I don't know enough about it. But I'll tell you this. Just like Donald Trump isn't going to fire anybody, whether they deserve to be fired or not, unless he feels the heat. Personally, I have zero faith that this Justice Department will prosecute anybody. Zero.

HUNT: Mr. Ambassador, I want to play for you what President Trump so far has said about this. He was asked about it by reporters who were covering a different event with him at the White House.

Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So he says there that he's being told about it for the first time. Now, when that happened, the story had been out. And, you know, in the in the banners on various news networks for a couple of hours.

Do you buy what the president said there?

BOLTON: No, because he -- he sits in his dining room, or at least did in his first term and watched Fox mostly. Occasionally, he tuned in to CNN, but maybe even MSNBC, but mostly Fox. If Fox had it on the news in the past several hours, then he knows about it for sure. Or somebody like Dan Scavino would have run in and told him.

But notwithstanding that, now you've got him on tape saying he's hearing about it for the first time, now well see if he feels any heat. If he doesn't feel the heat, these people are golden. They're in for as long as they can stay.

HUNT: Sir, do you think -- are you convinced that the Chinese or the Russians or any of our adversaries had access to this information as it was being communicated? Do you think it was fundamentally insecure and possibly widely disseminated?

BOLTON: You know, I don't -- I don't really know enough about what they were up to -- to be able to comment on that. I would just say this: we have government secure communications facilities for a reason. They may not be perfect either, but there isn't anything else that's as good. How else? How more how clearer can I be on that point?

That's why you don't use non-official channels for official business, and especially not for business that's sensitive or classified. It -- it just -- it's -- it's a very simple point. And you would think that somebody on this chain would have figured it out unless it bespeaks of a wider pattern of behavior that goes well beyond the events dealing with the strikes on Yemen.

HUNT: What's your assessment of how Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of "The Atlantic", handled this situation? He watched this unfold. He when he realized it was legitimate, he took himself off. He did right that this happened. But he did redact. Significant classified information that he was then privy to. It was not published in "The Atlantic". Overall, did he do the right thing?

BOLTON: Well, from a very brief reading of the article, I didn't see anything to criticize. I think his initial reaction that it might be a scam. It's somebody trying to entrap a journalist, or it might be a spoof or who knows what, it was legitimate for him to stay on. Whether he should have cut it off earlier or not, I think that's a question that reasonable people can disagree on.

I didn't see anything in the article that looked to me to be worse than a general description of what was in there, so I don't think he released any classified information. But again, I just say, why are we having this conversation? How could you? I don't know who put this chain together, but I wouldn't -- I wouldn't have such a chain. I can't -- I just can't even imagine --

(CROSSTALK)

HUNT: He seems to suggest that it was Mike Waltz, the guy in your role.

BOLTON: Somebody who had technical capabilities to put it together.

HUNT: All right. Ambassador John Bolton, really very much appreciate you scrambling to come talk to us about this breaking story. Thanks very much for your time today.

BOLTON: Thank you.

HUNT: All right.

Up next here, more on that key court hearing in Washington today. Three judges here now deciding just how much power to give the president when it comes to mass deportations.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:48:46]

HUNT: All right. Welcome back.

Right now, a federal appeals court is weighing whether to lift a temporary hold on President Trump's ability to use a sweeping wartime authority to carry out mass deportations. This is all about the Alien Enemies Act. You may remember, that's in the wake of the deportation of what the White House alleges are Venezuelan gang members.

D.C. Judge James Boasberg put it on hold and has been personally criticized by the president for that decision.

Today, the DOJ went before a three-judge panel appointed by presidents of both parties for what was a lengthy and at times tense hearing.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There were planeloads of people. I mean, it was also a class action. There were planeloads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people. Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, Your Honor, we certainly dispute the Nazi analogy.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HUNT: CNN senior crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz was at the courthouse and joins our panel now. The rest of you are also here.

Katelyn, those are words -- I mean, anytime someone uses the word Nazi, people's ears are going to perk up, right? And it's a very specific example in this case, because it was the last time that this law was really put into practice.

[16:50:02]

What did you learn at court today and what's your read on what happens next?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yeah, I mean, everybody did perk up when Judge Millett said that during the hearing, but she really reframed this entire discussion of the Venezuelan migrants being put on a plane and sent. There's been all this drama about the judge and the judge at the lower court and what the -- the Justice Department and the Trump administration were doing to communicate.

But this brought clarity to the law here. And refocused us, at least me watching the hearing, listening to the hearing around what the court appears to care about now, and that's due process.

This is not about releasing these people from custody. They are still in custody. It's not even about whether they can be deported under other means of the Alien Enemies Act. It's not even about Donald Trump giving orders.

At one point, Judge Millett even said that this isn't him directing a battleship move from one place to another. This is about whether people who were apprehended as part of Tren de Aragua received a hearing, and their lawyers say they didn't, and they deserve one. And there seemed to be some discussion from two of the three judges on the panel about what that hearing should look like in the terms of the judiciary, but that discussion is a totally different one than where we were before, a broader conversation about the presidential powers, the role of the judiciary.

This is about whether there should be a hearing, how that hearing would look. But, of course, this is the appeals court in the middle of the trial court and the Supreme Court. This could entirely change by the time it gets to those nine justices at the Supreme Court. We don't know what this panel is going to do, because there was one judge there, Karen Henderson.

She is a Republican appointee. She's been on the bench a long time. She did not ask any substantive questions, so she didn't tip her hand. And they're going to need two votes on what they do either way. But it's -- there's a lot of things going on here that really solidified today.

HUNT: Yeah. Governor Sununu -- I mean, obviously, the Trump administration argues from a political perspective, perhaps they're not incorrect from a political perspective that, look, if the Democrats are going to say that these people shouldn't be taken out and take that argument, then fine, that's -- that's fine with them. They think these people should be leaving the country that their voters are going to support that.

At the same time, the idea that we all have a right to due process, I mean, I know so many conservatives carry a copy of the Constitution around in their in their jacket pocket.

SUNUNU: I don't think there's much clarity here at all. I think it's still a bit of a mess. I think the valid point is the Trump administration isn't ignoring the court, right? There was all this discussion last week, oh, they're going to ignore the court. They're not saying -- no, they're going to go through an appeals process. And if that doesn't work, they'll go through another appeals and its going to be in the courts for and they're going to figure it out, and they're going to let the courts figure this process out. That's the good news.

You know, this is part of a bigger and broader issue of what is it, 64 injunctions now on -- on the -- on the orders of President Trump, I would argue that if this were President Biden doing the exact same actions, would there be 64 injunctions against Biden? No, of course not. Absolutely not.

So there is -- there is politics at play here, for sure. And it is hard. I mean, if the -- if the administration's position is, hey, we have the democrats arguing that we need to keep more murderers and rapists from Tren de Aragua in this country, then that's a political win for them.

JACOBS: I don't think anyone is arguing that. What we're arguing is you don't even know if the people who were deported are members of Tren de Aragua. And you don't know this because there has been no due process. And what we've heard from many of their lawyers is that, you know, one of them was a gay, hairdresser who was here legally seeking asylum and had no affiliation with Tren de Aragua.

We have heard other stories of really tenuous connections that make no sense. They mistake a tattoo for something else, right? We don't know if these stories are true. We don't know any of it because they didn't have a hearing. There was no due process.

And that's what we're saying. Every person in the United States, whether they are here documented or otherwise, has certain protections under the Constitution, including under this law, the Alien Enemies Act, that involves due process.

HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, something totally different. The Gator that's reaching new heights.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:59:00]

HUNT: All right, welcome back.

On a lighter note, imagine being 6'2" and being the shortest one in your family. I'm sorry. What?

If you don't know, March Madness is going on. And over the weekend, the CBS sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson posted this photo on her Instagram. This has not been edited. Your eyes do not deceive you.

She is standing next to Florida's Olivier Rioux, who, in addition to being on a D1 basketball team, is the tallest teenager in the world. He is seven foot nine, seven feet nine inches. Tracy next to him is five foot two. That's actually just shy of the average height for a woman in the U.S. the heels, I mean, they're not really doing very much there.

So, Rioux is not even playing in the tournament, but is obviously getting plenty of attention because you literally cannot miss him. Earlier, his team gave him a ladder to cut the net off of the hoop. Yeah, the ladder was like, not even required. Look at him there.

He told Guinness in 2022 that no one really knows why he's so tall. Doctors just say its family genetics. His father is 6'8". His brother is 6'9". His mother is 6'2". Somehow he came out of basically a foot taller than -- than the rest of them.

Okay, well, that's quite something. All I have to say is, did you see the buzzer beater for the Terps last night? My dad is thrilled.

"THE LEAD" with Phil Mattingly starts right now.