‘Margarita-gate’: Sen. Chris Van Hollen slams efforts to stage optics of meeting with Abrego Garcia
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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., set out to El Salvador this week to find Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man at the center of an erroneous deportation, and get answers about his condition.
While he was relieved to get a chance to meet the Abrego Garcia face to face on Thursday, the senator slammed El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and President Donald Trump for what he said was a setup to defame him and the deportee.
Van Hollen said Friday that what he called “margarita-gate” was manufactured by Bukele and his officials after they posted a photo of his meeting with Abrego Garcia at a table with what appeared to be filled margarita glasses.
The senator said those glasses were put on the table partway during the meeting by El Salvador officials and that neither he nor the deportee touched the drinks.
“Everything happens because Bukele says it could happen. And if you look at the video you sent out right afterwards with the fake margaritas, you can see that all of that was a setup,” Van Hollen told reporters.
The senator poked holes in the story that was being spread by Bukele’s and Trump’s allies and said the entire meeting was suspect from the beginning.
After being denied access to CECOT, the super prison that the government originally said was holding Abrego Garcia, Van Hollen said he was ready to fly back to the U.S. Thursday but got a message that the deportee was available to meet.
The El Salvador government tried to have the meeting poolside, but the senator said he had them take it indoors in a dining area. During the meeting, Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia had glasses of water and a coffee cup on their tables, which appeared in a photo posted by the senator.
The senator said that at one point during the hourlong meeting, officials put glasses on the table that appeared to have liquid inside with salt or sugar rims on top. Van Hollen said he had no idea what the liquid was.
The glass in front of Abrego Garcia had less liquid than the other glass, according to Van Hollen.
“They tried to make it look like, I assume, that he drank out of it,” the senator said.
Van Hollen said the insinuations about the margarita glasses don’t hold up under scrutiny.
“They made a mistake,” he said of the government officials. “If you sip out of one of those glasses, some of whatever it was, salt or sugar, would disappear. You would see a gap. There’s no gap. No one drank anything.”
El Salvador’s government has not commented on the senator’s claim.
Trump was asked about the photo of the meetings with the glasses earlier Friday and criticized Van Hollen as “fake” and repeated disputed claims that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member.
“They’re all fake, and they have no interest in that prisoner. That prisoner’s record is unbelievably bad,” Trump said before listing crimes of which other MS-13 members have been convicted.
None of the allegations made about Abrego Garcia’s being part of MS-13 have been made in court documents. Abrego Garcia’s family and attorneys have denied the gang allegations.
Van Hollen stressed that Trump is trying to divert attention from the fact that the U.S. government is not complying with the Supreme Court’s unanimous order that it facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. by bringing up gang violence.
“I mean, this is a guy who’s been in CECOT. This guy has been detained. They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which, of course, is a big fat lie,” he said.
The senator added that the case goes beyond Abrego Garcia.
“This case is not about just one man. It’s about protecting the constitutional rights of everyone who resides in the United States of America,” he said.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth/ Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is under scrutiny after The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg said he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat that included top national security officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which the officials discussed plans for a U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen.
Goldberg revealed the mishap in a piece for the magazine on Monday and told ABC News that he was apparently added to the chat by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
Goldberg provided two screenshots in the magazine piece and did not provide details or quotes, only a description of the operational part of the Signal message chain.
Both the Trump administration and top officials involved have repeatedly denied that war plans or classified information were discussed, as Goldberg reported.
Below is a timeline spanning from the creation of the group chat to what has happened since.
March 11
In an interview with “ABC News Live” Monday evening, Goldberg told Linsey Davis he received a message request on the Signal app from White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, or someone “who’s purporting to be Mike Waltz” on March 11.
He said the invitation was “not an unusual thing in Washington.”
“I’m a journalist, I’ve met him in the past, so I accept it,” he told ABC News.
Goldberg said he accepted the request, with nothing occurring until several days later, when he was added to a “group of seemingly very high national security officials of the United States” including Vice President JD Vance, with Waltz apparently creating this chat.
“Mike Waltz puts this group together and says it’s a planning group for essentially upcoming action in Yemen,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg told ABC News he initially thought it was a hoax since it would be “completely absurd to me that the national security leadership of the United States would be meeting on a messaging app to discuss forthcoming military action, and that then they would also invite the editor of The Atlantic magazine to that conversation.”
March 14
Goldberg told ABC News a “long conversation” occurred between the group chat members on March 14, discussing “whether or not they should or shouldn’t take action in Yemen.”
The messages went back and forth with “a lot of resentment directed at European allies of the United States, which obviously enhanced the credibility of this chain,” Goldberg said.
He told ABC News at this point the members of the chat sounded like people he knew within the administration, but still was not sure whether or not it was a hoax.
March 15
Goldberg told ABC News he continued to track the incoming messages from the group chat, to see “who was trying to entrap me or trick me.” Then on March 15, he said it became “overwhelmingly clear” it was a legitimate group chat, he told ABC News.
At 11:44 a.m., he said he received a text in the chain from someone claiming to be Hegseth, or “somebody identified as Pete,” providing what Goldberg characterized as a war plan. The message included a “sequencing of events related to an upcoming attack on Yemen” and promised results by 1:45 p.m. Eastern time.
Goldberg told ABC News he was in his car and waiting with his phone to “see if this was a real thing.”
“Sure enough, around 1:50 [p.m.] Eastern time, I see that Yemen is under attack,” he said.
When the attacks seemed to be “going well,” Goldberg told ABC News that members of the chat began sending congratulatory messages along with fist, fire and American flag emojis.
“That was the day I realized this is possibly unbelievably the leaders of the United States discussing this on my messaging app,” Goldberg told ABC News. “My reaction was, I think I’ve discovered a massive security breach in the United States national security system.”
Goldberg told ABC News he removed himself from the group chat once the operation was completed.
“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 wild,” Goldberg said.
March 16
Waltz appeared on ABC’s “This Week” the day after the strikes on Yemen and said the U.S. airstrikes “took out” multiple leaders of the Iranian-backed Houthis, which he said differed from the Biden administration’s launches against the group.
“These were not kind of pinprick, back and forth — what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks,” Waltz said. “This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted Houthi leaders and took them out. And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership, and two, holding Iran responsible.”
March 24
Goldberg published a story in The Atlantic revealing the mishap, in a piece titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
Shortly after the story’s publication on Monday afternoon, White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes shared with ABC News the statement he provided to The Atlantic confirming the authenticity of the Signal group chat.
“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 a statement.
Speaking to reporters Monday, Hegseth denied he sent war plans in the chat.
“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 in Honolulu while on a layover on his trip to Asia.
Hegseth called Goldberg a “deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”
“This is the guy that pedals in garbage. This is what he does,” Hegseth said about Goldberg.
During an event at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump was asked about Goldberg’s article. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic,” he said.
Top Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries voiced outrage at the administration after this mishap.
“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 in a statement on Monday.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who faced scrutiny over her alleged use of a private email server while at the State Department, shared her reaction to the Signal group chat on X: “You have got to be kidding me.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also criticized this apparent breach of military intelligence, urging Senate Republicans to work with Democrats in a “full investigation” to look into how this incident occurred.
“If you were up in arms over unsecure emails years ago, you should certainly be outraged by this amateurish behavior,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, referencing the scandal over Clinton’s emails.
March 25
On Tuesday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Goldberg is “well-known for his sensationalist spin” and emphasized that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed.”
“As the National Security Council stated, the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread. Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump, and everyone in the group, the Houthi strikes were successful and effective. Terrorists were killed and that’s what matters most to President Trump,” Leavitt shared on X.
Trump told NBC News he remains confident in Waltz even after the use of an unsecured group chat.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC correspondent Garrett Haake.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were grilled by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Tuesday regarding the mishap. Both officials said while testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence there was no classified information on the chain.
Ratcliffe said he believed the “national security adviser intended this to be as it should have been, a mechanism for coordinating between senior level officials, but not a substitute for using high side or classified communications for anything that would be classified.”
Speaker Mike Johnson continued to downplay the mishap but admitted the breach was a “serious” mistake on Tuesday.
“Look, they have acknowledged that there is an error, and they are correcting it. And I would’ve asked the same thing of the Biden administration,” Johnson said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
During a White House meeting with ambassadors on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said this incident is “just something that can happen” and that there was “no classified information” in the group chat.
He added that Signal is “not a perfect technology.”
“Sometimes somebody can get onto those things,” Trump said. “That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly.”
Waltz said the White House’s tech and legal teams are looking into the mishap.
“No one in your national security team would ever put anyone in danger,” Waltz said.
He also claimed to have never met Goldberg.
“We are looking into him, reviewing how the heck he got into this room,” Waltz said.
A spokesperson for The Atlantic released a statement on Tuesday night following the comments from Trump and his aides.
“Attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and other in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans,” the magazine said.
The statement went on to say that “any responsible national security expert would consider the information contained in this Signal chat to be of the greatest sensitivity, and would agree that this information should never be shared on non-government messaging apps.”
March 26
Schumer and other top Senate Democrats on national security committees wrote a letter to Trump seeking more information about the mishap, requesting a “complete and unredacted” transcript of the Signal group chat for the appropriate committees to review in a secure setting.
“We write to you with extreme alarm about the astonishingly poor judgment shown by your Cabinet and national security advisors,” the Senators wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by ABC News. “You have long advocated for accountability and transparency in the government, particularly as it relates to the handling of classified information, national security and the safety of American servicemembers. As such, it is imperative that you address this breach with the seriousness and diligence that it demands.”
The Atlantic on Wednesday published a new article detailing purported information about recent American strikes in Yemen it says was accidentally shared in the Signal group chat.
Shortly after the article was published, Leavitt said in a post on X “these were NOT ‘war plans.'”
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” Leavitt said.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Anne Flaherty, Luis Martinez, Isabella Murray, Allison Pecorin, Lauren Peller, Michelle Stoddart, Selina Wang and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries decried what he called the “toxic bait-and-switch” of President Donald Trump’s leadership on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday.
“Donald Trump and Republicans consistently promised that they were going to lower the high cost of living, and they’ve done the exact opposite,” Jeffries told co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “They’ve shown no interest in lowering costs in the United States of America, which are too high.”
Jeffries said the Trump administration has “broken their promise” to Americans, and accused them of having “no interest in improving the quality of life of hard working American taxpayers.”
“Instead, what they’re trying to do while they distract the American people is to jam the GOP tax scam down the throats of people all across this country, all in service of massive tax cuts for their billionaire donors and wealthy corporations,” he continued. “It’s a toxic bait-and-switch that is underway, and we will continue to push back forcefully.”
While Jeffries blasted his Republican counterparts, Speaker Mike Johnson has asserted Democrats are “flailing,” saying they “have no clear leader.”
But Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia has also suggested the party is without a clear leader. “We’re still looking for that national spokesperson,” Beyer told Axios. “And it could be that Hakeem becomes that national voice. … It hasn’t happened yet.”
Asked to respond to that, Jeffries said it was his “honor to be House Democratic leader.”
“We’re going to continue to work together in an all-hands-on-deck effort to push back against the far-right extremism that is being unleashed on this country with record velocity,” he said. “We’re pushing back forcefully against those efforts every day, every week, every month, every year, and that will continue.”
During the interview, Jeffries also said he was “very concerned” by the Department of Justice dropping the bribery case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
“Mayor Adams has a responsibility to convince the people of New York City that he will be able to continue to govern in a manner that puts their best interests first at all times, and that he’s not simply taking orders from a Trump administration, a Trump Department of Justice, or Trump officials who do not have the best interests of the city of New York at heart,” said Jeffries, who represents a Brooklyn district in the House.
“This Department of Justice is not promoting law and order — it’s promoting lawlessness and disorder,” he added. “And that’s been consistent with what we’ve seen from the Trump administration from the very beginning.”
As an example of this, Jeffries pointed to the mass pardoning of convicted Jan. 6 rioters “who attacked and brutally beat police officers and then were released back into communities all across the country, threatening public safety.”
Many of the pardoned rioters “have extensive criminal records for things like domestic violence, weapons charges that are serious and rape,” he added.
“This is not an administration that is committed to the safety of the American people. They continue to undermine it and flood the zone with chaos,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended his choice to vote with the minority of his party to keep the government open last week and his position as leader in an appearance on “The View” on Tuesday.
His comments come as some Democrats have publicly raised questions about their confidence in Schumer’s role as party leader following his move to allow Republicans to advance their led funding bill.
Schumer doubled down on the assertion he made on the Senate floor ahead of Friday’s closely watched vote: The Republican funding bill, called a continuing resolution or CR, was bad, but a government shutdown would have been worse.
“I knew it was a difficult choice, and I knew I’d get a lot of criticism or my choice, but I felt as a leader I had to do it,” Schumer told “The View” hosts.
Schumer said he and fellow Democrats “hated” the funding bill because it creates a “slush fund” for President Donald Trump, his adviser Elon Musk and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to “push around.”
But a shutdown, Schumer said “would have devastation like we have never seen.”
He said it would have given the Trump administration the freedom to slash programs it views as nonessential, with little to no recourse for Democrats to pursue. Programs like Medicaid and SNAP or funding for mass transit could have been indiscriminately slashed, he said.
“You have two choices: one bad, the other devastating,” Schumer said. “One chops off one of your fingers, the other chops off your arm.”
He said he was being “trolled” by Trump when the president congratulated him for passage of the bill on Trump’s Truth Social platform.
“He was trolling me. I know this guy. He’s trying to confuse people he always tries to confuse people,” Schumer said.
As a leader, Schumer said he had to act to avert a crisis down the road that would have been caused by a shutdown. But his position has not quelled calls within his own party for new leadership after Democrats appeared to some to be lacking in a strategy during Friday’s vote.
Schumer defended his role atop the caucus from ongoing criticism.
Responding to concerns that the party is somewhat aimless without an official leader, Schumer said Democrats have many talented leaders.
“When we don’t have a president, there is a lot of leaders. We have a great bench,” he said. “As for the Senate caucus, of which I am the leader, I should be the leader.”
Schumer touted his ability to recruit talent to win seats in the Senate, pointing to the 2020 election when Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff successfully claimed both seats in Georgia.
He also likened himself to an “orchestra leader” conducting his caucus to help their talents come through.
“We have a load of talent in our caucus, and I’ll tell you one thing: We are united in going after Trump and showing the American people that he is making the middle class pay for the tax cuts on the rich.”
Schumer also promoted his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A warning.”
He encouraged a number of individuals to read the book, including the president.
“He doesn’t understand what Jewish people are like. And he does things that can lead to antisemitism,” Schumer said. “He should read the book. He could learn something.”
He also warned against the left “sliding into” antisemitism.
