Trump’s Russia/Ukraine negotiator, property developer Steve Witkoff, was likely in a meeting with Putin in Moscow when Michael Waltz started the “Houthi PC small group” chat on Signal.
According to this story from Sky News on the ground, Witkoff arrived in Moscow around noon Moscow time on Thursday the 13th. He was kept waiting for an astonishing eight hours by Putin before meeting him around 8:00 PM.
The story goes on to say that the Kremlin announced that Putin’s meetings were done at 1:30 AM local time and Witkoff headed to the airport just half an hour later.
Fred Wellman
4:28 p.m. in D.C. (when the chat started) is 1:28 a.m. in Moscow. In assessing this timeline of events, Wellman (quoted above) asks if Witkoff had his personal phone on him inside the Kremlin. Could Putin have known the U.S. was about to strike the Houthis, a group Russia has supported with military counterintelligence?
We’ll ask another question: What are the chances that Witkoff’s phone, if it was with him, left the Kremlin with spyware installed? If our national security and defense officials weren’t communicating U.S. secrets via a personal messaging app, we might not bother asking.
