Never mind the reckless DOGE cuts last year and the damage they did to our national security, this hack wants us to believe that the partial government shutdown is somehow responsible for Kash Patel's personal emails being hacked.
Rep. Eric Swalwell warned us about the danger Musk's cuts were causing in an op-ed last year: Don’t let DOGE destroy CISA:
Cybersecurity is the frontline of our national security. President Donald Trump and his adviser, Elon Musk, are doing more damage to our cyber defenses than Moscow or Beijing have done in decades. They are taking our defense off the field and hoping our enemies don’t take a shot at the end zone. They are wrong, and we are going to get attacked. When we do, Trump will be responsible. [...]
Every year, the Director of National Intelligence tells us that China and Russia are using their cyber arsenals to attack America in an attempt to cripple our critical infrastructure. [...]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is on the front lines of defending federal networks, state and local governments, and critical infrastructure against these malicious state threats. Unfortunately, DOGE has descended upon CISA, and it’s unclear what will be left when the dust settles. [...]
In addition to bulldozing the federal workforce, DOGE is taking a chainsaw to CISA’s contract support. In mid-March, reports emerged that CISA slashed contracts that supported red teams — the “white-hat” hackers who test vulnerable systems and recommend security fixes to help keep the bad guys out. Reports later emerged that CISA cut $10 million in funding for the Multi-State Information and Security Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), which provides critical cybersecurity support services for state and local governments. CISA has supported these resources for its critical infrastructure and state and local partners because they play an essential role in keeping them secure and resilient. The threats haven’t gone away but DOGE is benching our best defenders.
And, as Grace Segers at TNR discussed, it's now putting Americans in danger:
As the United States continues to pursue war with Iran, the infrastructure that would have helped respond to threats has been hollowed out by the Trump administration’s efforts to dramatically shrink the federal government. The overall loss in institutional knowledge wrought by massive personnel cuts and other efforts to decimate the civil service might not just affect the future of this war, it risks the government’s ability to manage an array of future conflicts. [...]
Over the past year, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and politically appointed agency leaders have worked hard to gut the federal bureaucracy. The Trump administration has made dramatic cuts to CISA, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security that works to protect cyber and physical infrastructure from attacks. Moreover, CISA currently lacks a permanent leader, and is chiefed by an acting director.
The FBI has also purged several high-ranking officials due to their participation in investigations against Trump while he was out of office. In the days before the U.S. began its operation in Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel fired dozens of staff from a counterintelligence unit that monitored threats from Iran because they were involved with investigating Trump’s alleged holding of classified documents.
None of that stopped former Acting Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jonathan Fahey, during an appearance on this Saturday's Fox & Friends Weekend, from pretending that the recent DHS shutdown was somehow responsible for Kash Patel having his personal emails hacked -- something that CISA would not be monitoring anyway since they're responsible for monitoring government accounts, not personal ones.
Here's the exchange with Fahey and host Griff Jenkins, where they first lied about who is responsible for TSA agents not being paid, ignoring the fact that Trump could have ordered they were paid weeks ago instead of waiting until now, and lying about why Democrats want to get Trump's lawless ICE agency under control.
JENKINS: Jonathan, good morning. Thank you. It's really unbelievable what's transferring. And in Maddie's report there, the number of TSA agents calling out is because they can't afford to go to work and not get a paycheck because they make about $50,000 to $60,000 a year, and now they can't pay mortgages and all the others.
But it was interesting yesterday when President Trump explained why Democrats have got to get off their butts and find some common sense. Listen.
TRUMP: Airports to be defunded so that these people can come into our country. Not going to happen. [...] We also ordered emergency funding to resume paying the TSA agents immediately. They're getting paid. Democrats must stop their dangerous and destructive shutdown, and reopen the Department of Homeland Security without delay. And it's time that they start thinking properly.
JENKINS: Jonathan, your thoughts on this.
FAHEY: President Trump crystallized this issue perfectly because that's what the issue is about. It's about the Democrats want to continue this open borders, mass amnesty agenda.
And I think one thing that really demonstrates this, if you look at the bill that Senator Schumer was congratulating himself about, they were willing to basically open up DHS without ICE, without any of the reforms they claim the whole shutdown was about.
So it just shows that they were acting in bad faith from the beginning and their only true motive, again, is they want no deportations. They want illegal aliens to stay in this country for political purposes. Which is so shameful that because they can't achieve that legislatively or through the ballot box, so they have to use these, these methods that harm people, make people suffer, and put people at risk.
And one last point, Kash Patel's emails were hacked. We have an agency within DHS, CISA, that protects against cyber attacks. They haven't been funded either.
These people lie as easily as they breathe.
