(AUSTIN, Texas) — Multiple incendiary devices were found at a Tesla dealership in Austin, Texas, on Monday morning, according to the Austin Police Department.
Officers located the “suspicious devices” after responding to a Tesla dealership on U.S. Route 183 just after 8 a.m. local time and called the Austin Police Department Bomb Squad to investigate, police said in a statement.
The devices were determined to be incendiary and were “taken into police custody without incident,” officials said.
The FBI said on Monday that a task force to address the incidents targeting Teslas has been established.
“The FBI will be relentless in its mission to protect the American people. Acts of violence, vandalism, and domestic terrorism — like the recent Tesla attacks — will be pursued with the full force of the law,” the FBI said in a statement to ABC News.
Austin police said it is an ongoing investigation, and had no further information to release at this time.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is assisting in this investigation, according to a spokesperson for the agency, with the FBI leading the efforts.
Recent attacks aimed at Tesla dealerships, vehicles and charging stations have been reported in Las Vegas; Seattle; Kansas City, Missouri; and Charleston, South Carolina, as well as other cities across the United States since Tesla CEO Elon Musk began his role with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
The bureau has received reports of 48 instances where Tesla dealerships, cars and charging stations have been targeted, a law enforcement source told ABC News.
The FBI said on Friday evening that incidents targeting Teslas have been recorded in at least nine states since January, including arson, gunfire and graffiti.
“These criminal actions appear to have been conducted by lone offenders, and all known incidents occurred at night,” the FBI said in the public service announcement. “Individuals require little planning to use rudimentary tactics, such as improvised incendiary devices and firearms, and may perceive these attacks as victimless property crimes.”
The FBI urged the public to be vigilant and to look out for suspicious activity in areas around Tesla dealerships.
(ANN ARBOR, Mich.) — Two alleged victims of Matthew Weiss are suing the former co-offensive coordinator for the University of Michigan’s football team, who was arraigned Monday on federal charges that allege he hacked into the accounts of thousands of athletes to access private information, including “intimate images.”
The federal lawsuit was filed a day after the Department of Justice announced Weiss had been indicted on two dozen federal charges alleging he hacked into thousands of athlete and alumni accounts and downloaded private data, including intimate photos, over eight years.
The plaintiffs, who are not identified by name in the lawsuit, are two former University of Michigan female athletes. One was a member of the university’s women’s gymnastics team who attended the school between 2017 and 2018, and the other was a member of the women’s soccer team who attended between 2017 and 2023, according to the lawsuit.
Citing the allegations in the indictment against Weiss, the lawsuit claimed that between 2015 and January 2023, the former coach unlawfully gained access to the social media, email and/or cloud storage accounts of more than 3,300 people, including the two plaintiffs, and then downloaded personal, intimate photos and videos. Weiss primarily targeted female college athletes, the indictment alleged.
ABC News has reached out to Weiss’ attorney for comment on the lawsuit and federal charges and has not gotten a response.
The University of Michigan and the Regents of the University of Michigan are also named as defendants in the lawsuit, which alleged that as a result of their “recklessness and negligence,” Weiss downloaded the women’s “personal, intimate digital photographs and videos.”
The lawsuit alleges the university violated Title XI and that its “deliberate indifference to protection against the invasion of privacy for female athletes created a heightened risk of sexual harassment.”
“Plaintiffs are embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated, and mortified that their private information has been access[ed] by total strangers and third parties,” the lawsuit stated.
In response to the lawsuit, Kay Jarvis, the director of public affairs for the University of Michigan, said in a statement to ABC News, “We have not been served with the complaint and cannot comment on pending litigation.”
The lawsuit alleges that Weiss was able to gain unauthorized access to the student-athlete databases of more than 100 colleges and universities maintained by Keffer Development Services, LLC, a Pennsylvania-based company, and downloaded the personally identifiable information and medical data of over 150,000 athletes.
He is then accused of gaining access to the social media, email, and/or cloud storage accounts of more than 2,000 “targeted athletes,” including the plaintiffs, by guessing or resetting their passwords, according to the lawsuit.
“Once he obtained access to the accounts of targeted athletes, Weiss searched for and downloaded personal, intimate photographs and videos that were not publicly shared, including but not limited to Plaintiffs and others similar to them,” the lawsuit alleged.
Weiss illegally gained access to the accounts of more than 1,300 additional students or alumni from universities across the country, the lawsuit alleged.
Keffer is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which alleged that the company’s “misconduct, negligence, and recklessness also contributed to Weiss invading the privacy of Plaintiffs and their fellow student athletes.” ABC News has reached out to the company for comment.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the two plaintiffs and as a potential class action on behalf of other alleged victims. The number of potential class members is unclear but is estimated to exceed 1,000, the lawsuit stated.
Weiss, 42, was arraigned Monday on 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft. A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf, The Associated Press reported. His attorney, Douglas Mullkoff, declined to comment to the AP following the proceeding.
He was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond, ESPN reported.
If convicted, Weiss could face up to five years in prison on each count of unauthorized access and two years on each count of aggravated identity theft, according to the attorney’s office. Michigan fired Weiss in January 2023. Athletic Director Warde Manuel said in a statement the termination came “after a review of University policies.”
Weiss acknowledged an “ongoing investigation” and told ESPN at the time of his firing that he was “fully cooperating.”
“I have nothing but respect for the University of Michigan and the people who make it such a great place,” Weiss tweeted after his firing. “I look forward to putting this matter behind me and returning my focus to the game I love.”
Weiss started his career at Michigan as a quarterbacks coach in 2021 and then became co-offensive coordinator as well the following year. Before that, he worked as a coach in various capacities for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens from 2009 to 2020.
ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy and lead negotiator tasked with ending the war in Ukraine, has attracted criticism in Europe and Ukraine after an interview where he appeared to back a number of well-known Kremlin talking points on the conflict.
The comments, in which Witkoff seemed to accept the results of sham referenda Russia has previously held in Ukraine to justify its seizure of land there — including Crimea, will likely feed fears among European allies that the Trump administration is leaning too far toward the Kremlin’s vision.
In the interview for “The Tucker Carlson Show,” posted online on Friday, Witkoff talked about his efforts to negotiate with President Vladimir Putin, speaking warmly of the Russian leader. Witkoff said he believed the heart of the conflict was Russia’s desire to control four regions of Ukraine it partially occupied and has claimed annexed since 2022: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Talking about Putin’s claims to the regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, Witkoff suggested Russia had a right to them because they were majority Russian-speaking and repeated a false Kremlin claim that fair referenda there showed residents wanted to be absorbed by Russia.
“They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” Witkoff told Carlson.
However, Witkoff did not acknowledge that the supposed referenda held in those territories — whether in 2014 in the case of Crimea or 2022 in the other regions — were widely dismissed by Western powers, human rights organizations and international bodies as fraudulent and illegitimate.
Russia conducted referenda in the areas it occupied in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the fall of 2022, several months after seizing them with its full-scale invasion launched in February that year. Putin used the referenda to justify Russia’s subsequent annexation of the regions. Russia also held a similar referendum in Crimea in 2014 following its occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula.
The referenda were staged after Russia’s invasion had already forced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to flee, and while Russian security forces were abducting and torturing anyone expressing opposition to its takeover. In some areas, Russian soldiers were filmed accompanying vote collectors as they went from house to house.
No legitimate independent international observers monitored the referenda and they were widely dismissed as shams, including by the United States. The United Nations General Assembly rejected the referenda as illegal and violating the U.N. Charter.
In September 2022, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. “does not, and will never, recognize any of the Kremlin’s claims to sovereignty over parts of Ukraine that it’s seized by force and now purports to incorporate into Russia.”
Witkoff made the remarks on the Russian referenda a day before a new round of talks between the U.S. and Russia in Saudi Arabia aimed at trying to make progress toward ending the war. His portrayal of the referenda as legitimate triggered some fierce criticism in Europe.
“Witkoff’s repeating of Kremlin lies about ‘russian-speakers’ [sic] wanting to ‘join Russia’ is truly chilling,” Lithuania’s former foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, wrote on X. “Hearing Americans talk like this should be an electric shock for Europe, not a wakeup call.”
Some Ukrainian members of parliament also condemned Witkoff’s comments.
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the statements were “shocking.”
“I don’t understand what this is about — ignorance, naivety, unprofessionalism?” said Merezhko, who suggested Witkoff should be removed from his negotiating role. “Because we are talking about a representative of the president, who should professionally understand this issue and know some basic things. And he doesn’t know this. He is relaying Russian propaganda.”
In the interview with Carlson, Witkoff appeared to struggle to remember the names of the Ukrainian regions. “Donbas, Crimea. You know the names,” he told the conservative media personality, who prompted him to say “Lugansk” — the Russian transliteration for Luhansk. “Lugansk, and there’s two others,” Witkoff replied.
Although Putin declared he had annexed the four regions, his troops still do not fully control most of the area. Much of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, including their regional capitals, remain unoccupied.
A wealthy real estate developer, Witkoff has emerged as the lead negotiator for Trump’s effort to end the war, twice now traveling to Moscow, where he has said he spent several hours talking with Putin.
In his interview on Carlson, Witkoff was effusive in his praise for Putin, calling him a “very smart guy” and noting Putin told him he had prayed for Trump after the assassination attempt against him during last year’s presidential campaign. Witkoff added that Putin had given him a portrait of Trump which he says the Russian leader had commissioned from a famous Russian artist.
“This is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to reestablish through a simple word called communication, which many people would say I shouldn’t have had because Putin is a bad guy. I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” Witkoff said.
Witkoff also told Carlson he believed Russia “does not need to absorb Ukraine,” saying, “They’ve gotten what they want. So why do they need more?” He also said he “100%” believes Russia does not want to invade Europe, saying he took Putin “at his word” on that.
Witkoff also repeated an unsupported claim made by Putin that Russian forces have surrounded a significant number of Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region. Although Ukraine was forced to retreat from Kursk earlier this month, no evidence has emerged to suggest many Ukrainian soldiers are encircled, and both independent researchers and Ukrainian officials have said it is false.
“Witkoff uncritically amplified a number of Russian demands, claims and justifications,” the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote.
Witkoff’s comments could feed deep unease in Europe that the Trump administration, which is moving fast to restore relations with Russia, is more aligned with the Kremlin than NATO allies over the war in Ukraine. European officials and observers have also warned the administration, in its hurry to reach a deal, is vulnerable to manipulation by Putin.
The White House has argued its reengagement with Russia brings peace closer, but critics point out that the Kremlin has, so far, yet to make any significant concessions. Trump has claimed he isn’t “aligned” with Putin. “I’m not aligned with Putin. I’m not aligned with anybody. I’m aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world,” Trump said last month.
Vice President JD Vance on Monday defended Witkoff, writing on X he was doing an “incredible job.”
(NEW YORK) — The government has claimed that Palestinian protester Mahmoud Khalil intentionally misrepresented information on his green card application and therefore is inadmissible to the United States.
According to recent court filings, President Donald Trump’s administration said Khalil failed to disclose when applying for his green card last year that his employment by the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut went “beyond 2022” and that he was a “political affairs officer” for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees from June to November 2023.
“Khalil is now charged as inadmissible at the time of his adjustment of status because he sought to procure an immigration benefit by fraud of willful misrepresentation of a material fact,” attorneys for the administration said in the filing.
The administration also claimed that Khalil did not tell the government that he was a member of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group.
The government arrested Khalil on March 8 after invoking a rarely used provision of immigration law that they said allows the secretary of state to revoke the legal status of people whose presence in the country could have “adverse foreign policy consequences.” The new accusations seem to represent an attempt to strengthen the administration’s justification for detaining Khalil and denying his release.
“Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring, and there is an independent basis to justify removal sufficient to foreclose Khalil’s constitutional claim,” the filing says.
“The additional charges the government filed last week are completely meritless,” Marc Van Der Hout, whose legal firm represents Khalil, told ABC News in response to a request for comment. “They show that the government has no case whatsoever on this bogus charge that his presence in the U.S. would have adverse foreign policy consequences. This case is purely about First Amendment protected activity and speech, and U.S. citizens and permanent residents alike are free to say what they wish about what is going on in the world.”
“Regardless of his allegations concerning political speech, Khalil withheld membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose continuing employment by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he submitted his adjustment of status application. It is black-letter law that misrepresentations in this context are not protected speech,” the government said in the filing.
During a State Department briefing Monday, spokesperson Tammy Bruce was asked multiple times about whether the department now viewed prior work for UNRWA as grounds for disqualification for visa applicants — but she repeatedly declined to answer.
“If you lie in your efforts to come to the United States to get a visa for any reason, or for a green card, maybe there haven’t been repercussions, or we haven’t done things properly in the past. A lot of things have changed with the election of Donald Trump,” Bruce said in a general statement during the briefing.
Khalil, a leader of the encampment protests at Columbia last spring, was taken upon his initial detention from his student apartment building to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan and then to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before being transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, according to his legal team.
ABC News’ Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Multiple Trump administration officials who allegedly held classified discussions on an open messaging platform have in the past condemned the mishandling of classified records by others, including former President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
National security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have called for “consequences” for individuals who improperly shared classified materials, regardless of their intention. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth lambasted Biden for “flippantly” mishandling classified documents and suggested that if he had behaved similarly, he would have expected to be “court-martialed.”
The condemnatory language these senior administration officials have used about prior breaches of protocol in handling sensitive materials adds a layer of irony to what experts are calling an unconscionable misuse of classified information.
John Cohen, a former national security official in both Republican and Democratic administrations, said, “from a security perspective, there is no scenario that justifies this type of information being discussed over a non-government controlled communication platform.”
“Communicating sensitive, operational information in this manner increases the likelihood of inappropriate disclosure which places military personnel at risk,” said Cohen, who is also an ABC News contributor. “There will also be questions about whether doing so violated statutes governing the safeguarding and retention of government information.”
More recently, many of these senior administration officials had much to say about the yearlong investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials. The investigation did not result in any charges.
In January 2023, Hegseth, than a “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host, appeared on Fox News and called Biden’s actions “nefarious, sloppy and dumb.”
“If the top man in the job was handling classified documents this flippantly for that long, why was that the case? Was it really that he didn’t know? When you take something out of the SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] if you’re a senator, you know exactly what you’re doing. You had to sneak it out,” he said. The report included photos of boxes, including one damaged one that contained classified materials, including documents about Afghanistan that was found in the garage of Biden’s home in Delaware “near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.”
In January 2023, Rubio, also appeared on Fox News, where he said, “Any time documents have been removed from their proper setting — it’s a problem, I don’t care who did it.”
During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton drew controversy by using a private email server for official public communications rather than using official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers. The way many officials reacted has come back to haunt them.
In 2016, Hegseth told Fox News, “If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now… because the assumption is in the intelligence community, if you are using unclassified means, there is likelihood that foreign governments are targeting those accounts.”
Reacting to a Politico article on Clinton, Waltz, who apparently added Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, to the Signal chat, criticized the Department of Justice for its handling of the situation.
“Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent Top Secret messages to Hillary Clinton’s private account. And what did DOJ do about it? Not a damn thing,” Waltz said.
In January 2016, Rubio also appeared on Fox News, demanding that Clinton to be held accountable.
“Nobody is above the law … people are going to be accountable if they broke the laws of this country,” he said.
In August 2022 Stephen Miller, now Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy who was also in the Signal chat group, also posted his thoughts on X reacting to the Clinton email scandal.
“One point that doesn’t get made enough about Hillary’s unsecure server illegally used to conduct state business (obviously created to hide the Clintons’ corrupt pay-for-play): foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other sides of the globe,” he said.
Only two weeks ago, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced a crackdown on leaks within the intelligence community.
“Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such,” she said in a press release.
(NEW YORK) — Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg joined ABC News Live to discuss the moment he realized he had been added to a Signal group chat with top government officials discussing a U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen.
“My reaction was, I think I’ve discovered a massive security breach in the United States national security system,” Goldberg told Prime’s Linsey Davis on Monday.
This comes after the White House confirmed on Monday that the Signal group chat that inadvertently included Goldberg “appears to be authentic.”
“It’s almost automatically true that if the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic is being given access to this kind of information, weapon systems and packages and timing and weather in Yemen and all kinds of information about sequencing of particular events, then obviously there’s a security breach,” Goldberg told Davis.
Goldberg said he initially thought it might have been a “spoof” or “hoax,” but that “it became sort of overwhelmingly clear to me that this was a real group” once the attack occurred.
He said he removed himself from the chat and is “no longer privy to what, if anything, is going on in the chat.”
“I watched this Yemen operation go from beginning to apparent end, and that was enough for me to learn that there’s something wrong in the system here that would allow this information to come so dangerously close to the open, to the wild,” he said.
White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes shared with ABC News the statement he provided to The Atlantic confirming the veracity of a Signal group chat, which Goldberg said appeared to include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security,” Hughes said in the statement.
Hegseth denied how the story was characterized, saying, “nobody was texting war plans.”
“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters on Monday.
In the wake of the Signal chat’s surfacing, top Democrats have called for an investigation into the incident.
“The leak of sensitive national security information by the Trump administration on a non-classified system is completely outrageous and shocks the conscience,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement.
(NEW YORK) — A 21-year-old junior at Columbia University said she was the person whom federal agents were after when they showed up at a residence on West 113 Street earlier this month — and she is now suing President Donald Trump.
Federal immigration agents showed up at Yunseo Chung’s apartment near the Columbia University campus on March 13, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
However, law enforcement officials told ABC News at the time that the woman they were seeking was not there when the agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations arrived.
Chung, who has lived in the United States since she moved from South Korea at age 7 and had become a legal permanent resident, participated in demonstrations in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and in her lawsuit accused Trump and other officials of “attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike” including Chung’s.
Because Chung participated in a March 5 sit-in inside of an academic building at Barnard College, in addition to demonstrating outside, the federal agents searched her dorm, showed up at her parents’ house and said her status as a legal permanent resident had been revoked, according to her lawsuit.
“The prospect of imminent detention, to be followed by deportation proceedings, has chilled her speech. Ms. Chung is now concerned about speaking up about the ongoing ordeal of Palestinians in Gaza as well as what is happening on her own campus: the targeting of her fellow students by the federal government, the arbitrary disciplinary process she and others are undergoing, and the failure of the university to protect noncitizen students,” the lawsuit said.
“If Ms. Chung is detained and deported, she will be indefinitely separated from her family and community,” the filing continued. “Ms. Chung’s parents reside in the continental United States, and her sister is set to start college in the United States in the fall.”
Trump’s administration argued that Chung’s presence poses risks to foreign policy and to halting the spread of antisemitism — the same rationale the administration invoked for the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who was escorted from Columbia on March 8.
According to the sources, the actions against Chung are part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on individuals it has described as espousing the views of Hamas and threatening the safety of Jewish students.
ABC News’ Katherine Faulders contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Top Congressional Democrats are expressing outrage after members of President Donald Trump’s administration inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to an unsecured message thread discussing highly sensitive war plans on Monday.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who apparently added Goldberg to the Signal chat, was joined on the thread by those identified by Goldberg as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — among others.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded forcefully on the chamber floor on Monday, calling upon Leader John Thune and Senate Republicans to work with Democrats in calling a “full investigation” into why officials had coordinated military operations over Signal, rather than using taxpayer-funded secure communications channels.
“Mr. President, this is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time,” Schumer said.
“What we have here are senior U.S. leaders, including the Vice President and Secretary of Defense, having classified discussions of military action over an unsecure app,” Schumer continued. “It’s bad enough that a private citizen was added to this chain, but it’s far worse that sensitive military information was exchanged on an unauthorized application, especially when that sensitive military information was so so important.”
“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,” he added.
The Democratic leader said that the investigation he’s called for should look into how this “debacle” happened, the damage it created, and how they could avoid it in the future.
“Every single Senator– Republican and Democrat and Independent, must demand accountability. If a government employee shared sensitive military plans like this, they’d be investigated and face very harsh consequences,” Schumer said.
He also suggested that his Republican colleagues should be as “outraged” by this incident as they were over the email controversy involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the days before the 2016 election, which she lost to Trump.
“If you were up in arms over unsecure emails years ago, you should certainly be outraged by this amateurish behavior,” Schumer said.
Schumer ended his brief remarks by claiming that Democrats has anticipated an event like this one when they opposed Hegseth’s nomination.
“When Pete Hegseth came before the Senate as a nominee, Democrats warned that something like this might happen. These people are clearly not up for the job. we warned confirming them was dangerous, that they behaved recklessly. Unfortunately, we were right. Now, we must have accountability in both parties. The Senate should investigate how this blunder was even possible,” Schumer said.
Clinton also reacted. “You have got to be kidding me,” she posted on X on Monday.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also advocated for a congressional investigation and directly called out Hegseth.
“There should absolutely be a congressional investigation so that we can understand what happened. Why did it happen, and how do we prevent this type of national security breach from ever happening again,” Jeffries said at a press conference on Monday.
Jeffries, who got fired up when asked about the incident, called the situation “reckless, irresponsible and dangerous” and suggested that those involved were “jeopardizing America’s national security” — before sharply criticizing Hegseth.
“This whole Trump administration is filled with lackeys and incompetent cronies. I’m not talking about any particular individual, though,” he said. “I will note that the secretary of Defense who was on that chain has got to be the most unqualified person ever to lead the Pentagon in American history. Think about that.”
Speaker Mike Johnson downplayed the flurry of national security concerns on Monday afternoon.
“Look, I’m not going to characterize what happened. I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake, and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again. I don’t know what else you can say about,” he told reporters at the Capitol, following a White House event where he appeared alongside Trump and the governor of Louisiana.
Johnson added that he doesn’t believe Waltz or Hegseth should be disciplined for the incident.
In addition to his on-camera remarks, Jeffries released a statement on the national security breach, calling it “completely outrageous.”
“It is yet another unprecedented example that our nation is increasingly more dangerous because of the elevation of reckless and mediocre individuals, including the Secretary of Defense,” Jeffries said.
He reiterated his call for a Congressional investigation into the matter — even though Democrats have little power to do so since they are in the minority.
“If House Republicans are truly serious about keeping America safe, and not simply being sycophants and enablers, they must join Democrats in a swift, serious and substantive investigation into this unacceptable and irresponsible national security breach,” he concluded.
Speaking to reporters in Honolulu on Monday, during a layover for a trip to Asia, Hegseth disputed Goldberg’s description of the chat, saying “nobody was texting war plans.”
Trump said he “doesn’t know anything about it” when first asked about the reports on Monday afternoon. The Pentagon referred questions to the National Security Council and the White House.
When asked by ABC News on Monday, the White House said that the Signal chat “appears to be authentic.” Additionally, White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes shared with ABC News the statement he provided to The Atlantic confirming the veracity of a Signal group chat.
Both the top Republican and top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Monday that they expect to receive classified briefings aimed at addressing the incident.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Jay O’Brien, Lauren Peller and T. Michelle Murphy contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Boeing is seeking to withdraw its guilty plea agreement with the Department of Justice in the criminal cases surrounding two deadly 737 MAX crashes, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The agreement blamed the aerospace giant for misleading the Federal Aviation Administration before the two crashes in October 2018 and March 2019 that killed 346 people in total.
Boeing is seeking more lenient treatment from President Donald Trump’s administration and the DOJ is considering modifying aspects of the plea agreement, the sources said.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news.
The initial plea agreement was rejected by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in December 2024, who cited the government’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies as a factor in the selection of an independent compliance monitor for Boeing.
According to the most recent court filing, the two parties will continue to meet and negotiate and must notify the court by April 11 on how they plan to proceed forward.
Boeing declined to comment to ABC News and referred the question to the DOJ.
“Boeing got one of the most lenient deferred prosecution agreements in American history,” said Paul Cassell, a lawyer representing some families of the MAX crash victims. “The idea that after they breached that agreement, they get another opportunity to avoid acknowledging what it’s done seems, to me, to be wishful thinking on the part of Boeing.”
The first crash on Oct. 29, 2018, in Jakarta, Indonesia, killed all 189 passengers and crew. The second crash, on March 10, 2019, happened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when a Boeing aircraft crashed minutes after takeoff and killed 157 people onboard.
Both crashes preceded the Alaska Airlines incident in Jan. 2024, when a door plug fell out of the fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max 9, a newer model, after departure.
(SOLDOTNA, ALASKA) — Good Samaritans helped save stranded plane crash victims on Monday after their aircraft went missing over a mountain range in Alaska.
A Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser was reported overdue on Sunday night, according to the Alaska National Guard. The plane had taken off from Soldotna Airport in Soldotna, Alaska, earlier in the day on Sunday.
The Alaska Rescue Coordination Center, a U.S. Coast Guard Super Hercules, Alaska State Troopers and Alaska National Guard launched a search effort but could not find it.
There was no emergency transmitter signal coming from the wreckage.
However, the Alaska National Guard told ABC News that a cellphone ping led searchers to believe the plane was near Tustumena Lake and the Kenai Mountains.
It was a civilian in an aircraft who wound up spotting the plane crash site on Monday.
Alaska officials said it was a testament to the strength of the community in Alaska that when an aircraft goes down, everybody takes to their planes and they go out and look.
One of the good Samaritans seeking the missing plane was Dale Eicher, who told ABC News that he was able to fly over the site of the crash approximately half an hour after it was first located and saw the survivors awaiting rescue.
An Alaska Army National Guard Blackhawk medivac variant with extended range, a hoist and a flight medic — part of the 207th Aviation Troop Command — went out to where the wreckage was spotted and found three people on the wing of the PA-12, which had seemingly broken the surface of a frozen body of water and had become partially submerged.
The National Guard told ABC News that the plane had missed the main lake; instead, the aircraft seems to have settled amid a glacial field and large body of water.
All three passengers on the plane survived the crash, were successfully rescued and were taken to a local hospital. There are no further updates on any injuries or what led to the crash.
ABC News’ Lena Camilletti contributed to this report.
