"Criminal white house stunned that criminal is caught being a criminal"

Tell me they believe the law doesn't apply to them without telling me they believe the law doesn't apply to them.

Problem is, they're right. Absolutely fuck-all will come of this. We now return you to your regularly scheduled enshittification of the united states.

Why did you fire your aids, Hegseth?

Because they leaked the batshit insane plan to invade Panama.

How did you figure that out?

I wiretaped them through the NSA.

That's illegal Hegseth!

Ok, I didn't wiretap them. I just didn't like them. They didn't get along with my cheif of staff.

Then just say that! You have the power to fire people you don't like without both confirming a leak and admitting to a federal crime!

Well, to be fair, I was also drunk....

Hegseth's personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore. . . [was] Commissioned by Hegseth as a commander in the navy reserve

Honestly, in any other timeline, that alone would be headline worthy. Why the fuck is your personal lawyer a commisioned officer? Do you think attorney client privilege will still apply if he gets court martialed? Or is it because he's covered up crimes for you before?

The US military was preparing options for how to reclaim the Panama Canal?

What a delightful layer cake of lies, rumours and severe incompetence that is the Republican Trump administration.

And still we all stand by and take no action…

But the advisers found the claim to be untrue and complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who had been tasked with overseeing the investigation.

When misinformation comes naturally even your friends have no clue what's real.

They also then learned of a rumor at the Pentagon that the air force office of special investigations (OSI), which had been working the case for weeks beforehand, had possibly identified the leaked Panama canal document by virtue of the fact that it was a draft that lacked certain details that were in the final version of the document.

As the rumor went, the document had led the air force OSI to focus its investigation on mid-level aides who worked in the US Southern or Central Command or for the joint chiefs of staff, and had not been told to focus on the activities of the three aides until the weekend after they had been fired.

It was not immediately clear whether the the rumor was correct or even from where it emerged. But it appears to have spurred the White House to press Parlatore to disclose the evidence against Caldwell, including how the Pentagon knew what was on his phone.

At first, Parlatore rebuffed the attempts to obtain the underlying evidence, noting it was inappropriate for the executive branch to insert itself into an ongoing criminal investigation that he said could still yield charges.

But towards the end of April, according to what the Trump advisers shared inside the White House, Parlatore suggested that there had been a warrantless wiretap on Caldwell’s phone.

Madness.