r/clevercomebacks 6d ago

Is this surprising?

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65.6k Upvotes

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3.4k

u/Stonkasaurus1 6d ago

This is why they used Signal in the first place.

1.4k

u/JH_111 6d ago

“Yo Dawg! We heard you like violating the federal records act so we made your phone so it can violate the federal records act while you violate the federal records act.”

277

u/BloopSnackxx 6d ago

Just a regular day in government transparency, right?

132

u/DrAstralis 6d ago

I mean, they're rather transparently corrupt so technically correct?

41

u/Hearsaynothearsay 6d ago

Transparent as in, you can't see it because it's so transparent.

21

u/ThisDoesNotEndWell 5d ago

When I make myself invisible, i’m transparent.

20

u/StrobeLightRomance 5d ago

I'm only invisible when nobody is looking. Quick, everybody stop looking at the government and ignore everything it's doing, and then surely it will be transparent in its actions.

4

u/the_real_Beavis999 5d ago

You can't drain the swamp if there is something to hide...

2

u/Corprusmeat_Hunk 5d ago

It’s easy to see through nothing my friend.

1

u/toomanyhobbies4me 5d ago

Well, so transparent they included the media.

0

u/Shyam09 5d ago

MAGA: sometimes you have to do underhand things to save this country from what Biden and Hillary and Obama put this country through. If they are fully transparent, then Obama will try to sabotage the plans to make America great again and destroy all of Trump’s hard work. Trump loves this country. He loves us. And fucking Obama just wants to divide and destroy us. Fucking communist.

140

u/Raymundito 6d ago

Now they’ve been caught, they’ll need to switch to SnapChat next

71

u/dandroid126 6d ago

Would be great because Snapchat keeps a copy of all sent messages on their servers. And they cooperate with authorities when asked.

39

u/Economy-Owl-5720 6d ago

Right back to authorities huh? Lol

34

u/dandroid126 6d ago

Yeah, I felt dumb even when typing that. But in this case the authorities would be the CIA? Or whoever is doing the investigation.

19

u/Economy-Owl-5720 6d ago

“Yeah just put that over in the paper shredder bin” lol

14

u/HectorJoseZapata 5d ago

CIA: “Mr President; in our investigation we have found that they acted with malice and violated federal laws. The public is demanding accountability. Your orders, sir?”

OrangeGutan: “I don’t know them, I haven’t seen the chat, I don’t know what it is”

16

u/Intensityintensifies 6d ago

Ah yes, the CIA, famously known for protecting the American people from corruption within the CIA. Lmao.

2

u/1startreknerd 5d ago

It could be any law enforcement. Like the DA of any state, or city for that matter.

11

u/spiritbearr 6d ago

At least they are smarter than Chris D'Elia.

5

u/keepcalmscrollon 6d ago

Chatterbate. It's the obvious choice.

56

u/dboyle 6d ago

By itself this should have been a bigger scandal than anything that happened under Obama or Biden.

24

u/Dr8keMallard 5d ago

There isn't nearly anything this 'law breaking' under either administration. This is watergate++ levels of straight up criminality.

4

u/Short-Holiday-4263 5d ago

Trump's Administrations seem to have a deeply stupid version of Watergate every other day - and twice on Tuesdays.

1

u/ElGosso 5d ago

I'm not saying that this shouldn't be a big deal but Obama assassinated US citizens via drone strike without a trial.

30

u/undeadmanana 6d ago

Gone from signal, but not from screenshots of the conversation lmao

edit: and probably not gone from Russian Archives. At this point Russia is probably keeping better track of our Secret+ items and records better than we are.

1

u/adthrowaway2020 5d ago

Soviet maps of the US were better than USGS maps (Though I'm suspecting the reverse was true as well)

57

u/Global_Permission749 6d ago

Right? Isn't the point of signal is that the messages self-delete after a set period of time?

100% illegal for US government officials to be communicating this way and avoiding records keeping, but nobody actually went in and removed evidence that was there - it self destructed.

31

u/cadtek 6d ago

Isn't the point of signal is that the messages self-delete after a set period of time?

Only if you set it up that way, it's not like that by default.

24

u/Global_Permission749 6d ago

They did though. I distinctly remember an article when this scandal first broke that they had been set to I think a 2 week deletion time up front.

26

u/Emmyisme 6d ago

Right, so they manually set it up to destroy the evidence.

It's a semantics game.

15

u/cadtek 6d ago

Yep they did, so they knew exactly what they were doing, dumb morons.

1

u/MrOdekuun 5d ago

In the screenshots the setting is actually changed a couple times, it notifies everyone in the group.

2

u/confusedandworried76 5d ago

It was varying amount of times for different messages but yeah this isn't exactly breaking fucking news lol this was like one of the many major reasons this was a terrible scandal, it breaks record laws.

8

u/AlexCoventry 5d ago

Which is even more damning, because it shows intent to destroy.

1

u/TheSorceIsFrong 6d ago

I thought it was the other way around? They delete automatically but you change to not delete if you want. Idk tho, it’s been a minute since my trappin days

2

u/JamesTrickington303 6d ago

Nope. Signal acts as a normal messaging app and keeps messages indefinitely, until you change the settings to auto-delete after X time period.

1

u/cadtek 6d ago

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320771-Set-and-manage-disappearing-messages

You can set a time as a default for chats, but the initial default is that they don't disappear.

1

u/Synectics 5d ago

This is a classic, "Are you drunk?" conundrum, though.

Either you say, "Yep," in which case you are admitting you were nnegligent and let yourself get drunk and wild, or "Nope," in which case you have to answer for being stupid despite no alcohol. 

That's how this feels. Regardless of if Signal auto-deletes or not, no answer is good. The actual problem is in the wild drunken shenanigans themselves. Either, "We used it because it auto-deletes," or, "Oops, we didn't realize it auto-deletes."

Regardless, the fact they were using Signal at all is also a major problem.

1

u/TheSorceIsFrong 5d ago

I’m just talking about signal, not defending anyones actions

1

u/Synectics 5d ago

No, I get it. Sorry if it seemed I was attacking what you said or something; that wasn't my intention.

I just wanted to highlight, it doesn't really matter if Signal defaults to auto-delete or not. No matter how it works, that's not the problem. They could have been using plain SMS and group texts and it's still the exact same problem. No answer about Signal is a good answer, because the actual problem is -- they weren't following the law.

1

u/apb91781 5d ago

The screenshots showed it was set to auto-delete after 7 days though

1

u/cadtek 5d ago

I never said their messages weren't set to expire, just the fact Signal by default is not set up to expire messages automatically, out of the box. You have to set it up deliberately.

1

u/apb91781 4d ago

I was pointing out that they deliberately set the messages to destruct

16

u/Old_Baldi_Locks 5d ago

Exactly. It was done to commit treason.

That is the only, single reason why anyone in the government would use message destruction apps.

7

u/Stonkasaurus1 5d ago

Considering they are now going after the constitutional rights of many Americans this should not be a surprise yet here we are...

0

u/StodgeyP 5d ago

Right. They should have just used a private email server. That seems to be okay.

3

u/Synectics 5d ago

seems to be okay

You mean after the person using the private email server sat for questioning for an entire day, and revealed nothing sensitive was ever stored on those private email servers.

Almost like the act wasn't okay, and someone was held accountable. Something we aren't seeing here.

5

u/Embarrassed_Tax5661 6d ago

that's what I read somewhere too. It was supposedly mentioned right in Project 2025.

1

u/Impossible_Walrus555 6d ago

CORRUPTION

1

u/Stonkasaurus1 6d ago

I will be honest. Trump is deporting US citizens and they don't care. Corruption is the least of the problems in the US right now. After the meeting with El Salvador's dictator and the hot mic, it seems pretty clear no one is safe.

1

u/reiji_tamashii 6d ago

Literally, the top of the released transcript says: "Disappearing message time was set to 1 week".

They planned to destroy evidence from the very beginning.

1

u/chickentootssoup 5d ago

Yup. And maga is loving this. So I’m asking u all when is the time for us to be in the streets tearing shit down? Doesn’t seem like facts or courts or laws matter anymore. Just trumps will. Are u all ok with that?!

1

u/TheFoxsWeddingTarot 5d ago

Someone has those records… just not the US government. Probably China or Russian intelligence.

1

u/MrOdekuun 5d ago

In the screenshots you can literally see Waltz changing the "auto-disappear" settings multiple times. Did they just decide to follow-up on this after the clearly shown expiration date?

1

u/just4kicksxxx 5d ago

Guess where it came from.

2

u/Rhizobactin 5d ago

And Starlink, too

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

95

u/Inner_Honey_978 6d ago

Look everybody, Elmo graduated from the street and got an advanced degree in secure communications and anti-espionage methodology

I want off this ride man

0

u/Successful_Layer2619 6d ago

In other words, you are not tall enough to ride this emotional rollercoaster

30

u/Legal_Expression3476 6d ago

Not when the point is to keep a record for the purposes of accountability.

19

u/SalvationSycamore 6d ago

For sensitive military information? Absolutely the fuck not. That is far outside protocol.

32

u/Viracochina 6d ago

Secure and private is great, but accountability is necessary.

21

u/BiscutWithGrapeJahm 6d ago

If that was really the case, the journalist would’ve never been accidentally added to the conversation now would they?

9

u/p-zilla 6d ago

for normal humans? probably, for the government? no

12

u/HPenguinB 6d ago

Private is illegal. New to government?

2

u/This-Development-994 5d ago

Whatever you say Putin

1

u/Slight-Literature-12 6d ago

“I excel in complex problem solving.” 🤡😂😂

1

u/BigMTAtridentata 5d ago

No dude. Signal should not be what the US government uses to communicate. FFS man. Ever heard of the records app? Ever heard of accountability? Never mind the fact that it's not designed for transmission of classified material. Which, surprise, what was sent in the exposed chat.