Also haven't heard anyone mentioning this, but late on the Friday before this story was published, Hegseth's chief of staff sent a late night memo threatening anyone that leaks classified information to the press by saying they're going to start doing polygraph tests at DOD, and said
“If this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure,” then such information “will be referred to the appropriate criminal entity for criminal prosecution,”
So threatening to turn Department of Defense employees over to the authorities for leaking classified information to reporters if they fail a polygraph (which isn't even admissible in court bc they give false positives so often).
Then it turns out, oops the guy trying to intimidate everyone texted classified information to a reporter in a group chat and now it's a story in the Atlantic
Damn, I've been so distracted with the everything else I didn't even think of that, but yeah sounds about right.
Little fucking fascists typing up their big scary memos to prove how much they love trampling on rights