Speaking aboard Air Force One on Thursday, Trump confirmed the NSC dismissals and acknowledged Loomer’s role in advising him. “She makes recommendations … and sometimes I listen to those recommendations … I listen to everybody and then I make a decision,” he said.
Loomer, who has promoted conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks and espoused anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, has become an increasingly vocal presence within Trump’s political orbit. In recent weeks, she has publicly attacked members of Trump’s own team, accusing them of undermining his agenda. “Laura Loomer is a very good patriot,” Trump said on Thursday. “She is a very strong person.”
On Monday, Reuters reported that an operative from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) assigned to the US Justice Department was previously a hacker who ran websites distributing pirated ebooks and software. According to a Reuters review of domain registration data and archived pages from the Wayback Machine, one such site, fkn-pwnd.com, featured the slogan “Fucking Up Servers!” alongside a crude sketch of a penis.
Christopher Stanley, a 33-year-old engineer who has worked at both Musk’s social media company X and space company SpaceX, is a senior adviser in the deputy attorney general’s office, according to a former Justice Department official and a staff directory listing reviewed by Reuters. Starting about 10 years before joining SpaceX, Stanley allegedly ran several online forums that covered software piracy, video game cheats, and hacking. Reuters reports that he used various pseudonyms on those sites, including eNkrypt and Reneg4d3. The fkn-pwnd.com site, launched in 2006, would have been created when Stanley was in high school.
The Reuters report follows inquiries into another DOGE technologist, Edward Coristine, who worked briefly for a firm known for hiring reformed hackers, a WIRED investigation found.
Last week, The Atlantic exposed a staggering operational security failure when it reported that someone using the Signal account belong to national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally invited the publication’s editor-in-chief to a private Signal group chat discussing a covert bombing operation in Yemen. Now, Politico reports that Waltz’s team has routinely used Signal chats—on a far broader scale than previously known—to coordinate official work on sensitive issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
Sources who spoke to Politico on the condition of anonymity say they were directly involved in or had knowledge of at least 20 such group chats. While none of the four individuals could confirm whether classified information was shared, all said the discussions regularly included sensitive national security details. In the wake of these revelations, Waltz and other US government officials have also come under scrutiny for leaving their Venmo accounts public and reportedly using personal Gmail addresses for government business.
On Thursday, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced a review of defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the encrypted Signal app to share plans for operations against the Houthis in Yemen.
