Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says People Need to Be Held Accountable for “Signalgate,” Not Just “Trump somehow blaming this on Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or whoever”; “we need to get those phones”

See below for video and a partial transcript (highlights in bold) from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability, held earlier today.

• “On the bigger topic of the The Atlantic article and the complete and royal screwup that took place, I didn’t think this administration could still shock me with their sloppy and careless behavior. But this incident, which I’m going to talk about in a moment, shocked me – and what was particularly shocking and it makes it so much more egregious is that this is not a one off. This is a pattern of incompetence. That’s stunning. I mean, you know, first couple of weeks of the administration, they put a couple of hundred new CIA officers, they disclosed their information by putting it on an unclassified network. You know, the United States government, our taxpayers spent a couple hundred thousand dollars to get a security clearance and train a CIA agent. The idea that these men and women now, because they’re in their identities, have been compromised, can’t serve in certain dangerous spots around the world, that doesn’t make America safer.”
• “If we look at the constant mistakes of the DOGE boys, the fact that they put out for a day a lot of real estate, federal government real estate, and it’s been reported in the public press that some of those, at least one of those sites, was a classified site. So, you know, that identity is given up. If you look at the fact that…you’ve got these 24, 25 year old kids rummaging through all of the Treasury information, there are things that the United States government does where there may be a covert operation that is spent through a covert company. You know, you have people with not enough security clearance and for the most part, ignorance, arbitrarily making choices about what to reveal. All bad behavior. Frankly, it reflects, again, a sloppiness here, that I think as a former business guy, you know, I would fire a lot of these folks. Think about the list that DOJ’s puts up of cost savings. That is just wrong, that anybody who would run a business, 1 to 1 check would have realized was wrong. So I was pretty immune. But this colossal screw up, this you know, Signalgate fiasco or whatever it’s going to be known by, where let’s go through the mistakes and the abuses: to have classified conversations, particularly talking about specific armaments and battle plans on a non-secure channel, any military officer or CIA officer who did that would be fired. But these senior Trump officials not only did that on a non-secure network, but they didn’t even have the common sense to check and say, all right, we got all these names on this on this chat, what’s this guy over here? Who is he, anyway?…I can tell you when when I do a conference call with nothing secure and there are people that are unidentified on the call, I call out and ask people to identify themselves. So, you know, mistake number one of having those kind of conversations.”
• “Mistake number two is the fact that this could put Americans in harm’s way if that level of this information had gotten out and it hadn’t been a responsible journalist, but it was somebody that kind of turn this over to Iran or the who these Americans could have died. Plain and simple. The Houthis could have moved their defensive tools and they could have taken down an American plane that was piloted. And to put our soldiers, sailors and airmen in that kind of harm’s way because of sloppiness. On top of that as well, you’ve got the question of will our allies continue to share information if we’re this sloppy? You know, I believe we ought to put America’s priorities at tops, but America first shouldn’t mean America alone. And that’s where we’re headed. And then to add insult to injury, we saw yesterday two of these individuals that were on this this chain, the director of national intelligence and the director of the CIA, and I believe lie to the committee. They were either so uninformed that they didn’t understand that battle plans would be classified in anybody’s book or they didn’t read or didn’t go back to see what was on on this chain, because they said, no classified information, nothing to see here. Well, even on the face of it, the idea of disputes between American senior leaders before an attack, Russia and China would give their right arm for that. Iran would have been extremely feel that is valuable information. But then the secretary of defense, after calling the journalist and in a normal kind of Trumpian, you know, not apologize, but attack, smear and undercut after doing all that and say nothing here. These are detailed battle plans that should never be released. I think the secretary of defense should do the right thing and resign. I believe the national security adviser, who I hope to build a good working relationship with, but the fact that he couldn’t have folks even figure out who was on the call is a is a firable offense.”
• “Where do we go from here? Let me give you a couple things that we need to hear and we need to find out. One, have we collected the phones that these individuals use to make sure they’re not compromised? There is the ability for spy services to place malware in phones. We’ve got to make sure it didn’t happen. And again, to just make this so much more egregious, you had the director of National Intelligence abroad doing this, and she wouldn’t even acknowledge whether it’s her phone or the government phone. And we need an answer to that. We had one of the folks, Mr. Witkoff, who I’ve never met, you know, on this chain of communications in Russia. Rule number one, you don’t bring your own devices to a Russia or China where they can be penetrated. So we need to get those phones. We need to see whether the the specific plans that I don’t believe the secretary of defense actually typed those out, he cut and paste from someplace – do those same plans appear in other Signal chats? What is going to be the protocol going forward to make sure this never happens again? And finally, is anyone going to be held accountable? You know, these jobs are serious jobs that require serious people. And, you know, this gross dereliction of security procedures…demands that there be someone be held responsible or people be held responsible. I think it starts with head staff and what I think are the folks who were testifying yesterday who dissembled or lied consciously or unconsciously. I know they’re before the House committee today. I’m sure they will, you know, try to bob and weave. I mean, the fact that the director of national intelligence wouldn’t even acknowledge whether it was her phone or a or a government phone, you know, this is playing not only with America’s reputation as playing with the lives of our servicemen. You know, what is going to be finally, the effort that where I bet a lot of Republicans I work with who I know care desperately about national security, will they stand up and step up and join so that we can get to the bottom of this? Make sure that doesn’t happen again and people are held accountable?”
• “We know the harm has been done. We know this hurt us with our allies. We know there’s going to put Americans in harm’s way. And anybody who wants to have a semantics debate, and it’s if this crowd suddenly says, you know, well, this wasn’t classified or this wasn’t important, you know, beyond looking foolish, I would say it insults the intelligence of the American people. And again, I think there should be accountability. What I want  – and this isn’t some long blown out investigate mission. Nobody’s trying to create a Benghazi commission here – it’s you know, somebody’s got the basic security and hygiene to check these phones, make sure they’re not compromised to going forward. How do you make sure, particularly when you’ve got government communications available, if you’re on an American plane flying abroad as director of national intelligence, don’t tell me it’s hard to get to secure comms. You’ve got secure comms on the plane. How are we going to make sure those protocols go forward? I got to tell you, I’m very concerned about, Secretary Hegseth – did he cut and paste all this information or did he already have it because it appeared in a separate signal conversation? We need to find the answer to that. And then ultimately, you know, where does the buck stop? Who’s going to be held responsible? I can tell you without any doubt, if this had been a military officer or a CIA agent and they had been this sloppy, careless, they would be fired. No ifs, ands, no buts. And again, the hypocrisy and this is the part that kind of makes my head explode, you got the director of national intelligence self-righteously tweeting 12 days earlier. if there are any leaks, we’ve got to pursue it to the full extent of the law. Well, I hope the administration lives by the words of their director of national intelligence.”
• “Well, my first answer would be you deserve better. Your sons and daughters deserve better. They deserve a defense structure that realizes that you keep secret information secret because lives could be lost. Thank God the strike itself took place and there was no there was no loss of American life. But this won’t be the only strike. And, you know, and it and it’s not the fact they had a conversation, you got to have a conversation. You know, these are these are debates that I have participated in. But you do it on secure communications. And if there is no one held responsible and this is just a kick the can or, you know, you hear Donald Trump somehow blaming this on Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or whoever happens to be the blame victim of the week, I hope they realize that kind of commentary doesn’t make their kids who are serving safer. And if there’s not accountability here, if nobody’s fired and everybody goes merrily along, you know, I just hope they will folks will remember that when it comes time to make future choices.”
• “We have made voting both more accessible. And I’m old enough to remember when this was totally bipartisan. Things like motor voter registration, when you get your license, you get a chance to register. And there has been study after study after study that shows that voter abuse or misrepresentation is infinitesimally small. And, you know, I believe there was a study that even showed there were like, you know, it was like 20 some and the majority had voted for President Trump…This is a policy of trying to cut back, I believe, on minority voters. I think it’s oftentimes a cut back on trying to prohibit younger voters. And, you know, I don’t believe it’ll stand up to legal scrutiny or legal challenge. And I don’t know. But it is not, again, the first time we’ve seen, you know, efforts in state after state to roll back back voting. We’ve seen it. You can’t give somebody water while they’re waiting in line in the sun in Georgia…sometimes for hours, because you don’t have enough polling stations, particularly in districts that are minority represented. You’ve had efforts and the Supreme Court cut back on the Voting Rights Act in terms of the civil rights enforcement for states like ours, like Virginia, who’d had a you know, a longer term history of voter intimidation. But we see continuing movements from this administration that are, frankly, anti-democratic… whether it is this effort to cut back on voting, whether it is the effort to not provide folks due process, the fact that, you know, there was still questions whether Mr. Trump will obey judicial orders. I’m not a guy for hyperbole, but, you know, a lot of this is going to end up at the Supreme Court. Donald Trump is our president. He is not a king. He does not have powers that are unchecked. And, you know, again, this is such a pattern. Remember, this is the same guy that also tried to go against the Constitution and revoke birthright citizenship. So…I think any discerning voter ought to say, well, why is he trying to do all this when there’s no evidence that there’s any kind of massive voter fraud? Well, I think he thinks that cutting back on voting, cutting back on more Americans participating is actually against his political interests. And that’s a fairly sad commentary in itself.”
• “Well, it’s the idea that you were so sloppy as to not to check all the names who was on the group chat. The fact that we have, you know, the CIA is very specific. They say, you know, regular conversations actually Signal is safer than traditional cell phones. But they are so explicitly clear and it’s in the public domain, that do not use this channel as a secure communications channel. We have separate whole networks that we’ve invested billions of dollars to make sure that this doesn’t happen. With these folks are so careless or irresponsible or, gosh, it’s a hassle to go back to a SCIF, a secure area to make that call. To have that behavior with specific battle plans and the armaments that were being used. And then to have witnesses come yesterday and deny any of that under oath. You know, if you’re hearing frustration and amazement, it is. And it’s not just about what does that say to the men and women in our military or in our intelligence community who get fired by this behavior, but what does that do for their morale if they think their bosses don’t care enough about, you know, frankly, the folks who are fighting or the folks who are spying not to have basic, you know, security protocol?…And I know people say, well, this doesn’t really matter about our allies, but I say that respectfully for people who believe that, you know, don’t have an understanding of how our defense networks and our intelligence networks work. You know, we have the best intelligence services in America, but, and we’re better than any other country, but if you take all of our allies in aggregate and what they share, that makes America safer. If those allies aren’t sharing information with us that makes America less strong, it makes us more vulnerable, and it puts more Americans in harm’s way. And we have to get to the point, God forbid, some catastrophic event before people say enough. And listen, I’ve been you know, I get accused often have been too bipartisan. I’m guilty as charged. But my gosh, you know, a lot of the Republican senators, I know they care deeply about our national security. Are they going to find their voice and be willing to call this out or pretend and ignore or look elsewhere or allow, you know, this administration to try to obfuscate what was clearly a screw up? The fact that there was not even at least yesterday from the witnesses, any kind of humility to say, yeah, we screwed up. It was back to like, I almost felt like I was hearing Trump with, oh this is a perfect phone call in reference to how Trump characterized the call, first call with President Zelensky, where he he, you know, asked for political dirt on Biden. And you know, what I imagine we’ll hear is that somehow at the end of the day, this will be Joe Biden’s fault or Hillary Clinton’s fault with  her servers or Barack Obama, or maybe they’ll even try to blame Bill Clinton. God knows who they’re going to blame. But what I know they’re not going to do is accept responsibility. And if they don’t get bipartisan pressure, I would be concerned that no one would be held responsible. And that would be a travesty.”
• “I thought Angus [King] did a great job. You know, for 11 years straight, climate change has been in this document. It was in this document every year that Trump was president the first time. And if anybody thinks, my gosh, somehow in the last three months, sea level rise has gotten better or we’re not seeing extreme weather events, then they’re either oblivious or ignorant. If these folks didn’t realize that we spend millions of dollars a year raising the piers in Norfolk so the fleet can still appropriately dock there, then they are either ignorant or willfully not understanding, you know, the world. I mean, one of the things that was and this was not classified, but in subsequent questioning, you know, they will acknowledge that, you know, Russia and China are spending a lot more time focused on the Arctic. Well, why are they spending more time focused on the Arctic now than ten years ago? Well, the reason is and ultimately they acknowledge this, that the Arctic is melting and that means there are more sea channels that are made available. And to pretend that this is, you know, not happening is again, doesn’t make America stronger.”
• “One of the things I was hoping to ask yesterday, did I get a question, a chance to ask is you on the the assessment there was an acknowledgment that Russia is still trying to meddle in elections. And they use you know, they use bots, they use different tools. They use disinformation, but election interference. Well, if that’s the case, why is the Trump administration already disbanding the election integrity units? And again, the irony of this is that the first Trump administration did a damn good job on election protection for the 2020 election for the 2018 election. We had a strong working group from the Trump administration. We have seen since that time in nation after nation. Russia’s meddling increase. I think about some of the things in the Czech Republic recently, but for them to, you know, mention that while at the same time disbanding our election integrity units, you know, again, this doesn’t make America safer.”
• “Well, listen… my job is to get to the bottom of this, to make sure that this is not the only time this has happened, to make sure that if phones are compromised, that that they are destroyed. It’s to make sure that some folks are held accountable so that there is a greater sense of responsibility that we owe to our men and women, in particular our sailors who are on the front line in this region. There will be, I’m sure, subsequent attacks on the Houthis. And when those men and women climb into those jets, they ought to have a better assurance that the Houthis are not lying in wait because somebody has been careless with the information…And I think whether it is active duty or I think, you know, we are hearing it just didn’t even get us into the other issues…of our veterans and how their services are being cut back. I think early next month we’re going to go ahead and do the opening of the new major military V.A. facility on the southside. Been ten years in the making. I can tell you the one we opened in Fredericksburg a few weeks ago, it’s only about a third staffed because who wants to go work for the V.A. if you’re going to be fired without cause? So we owe a lot to our active duty, but also our veterans. And this president, Donald Trump, is letting them down on almost a daily basis.”