It’s not just national security adviser Mike Waltz who sucks at, well, maintaining national security. Dozens of Trump Cabinet officials are also clueless when it comes to protecting their personal information.
Known dropped a report on Tuesday showing that more than 50 members of Congress and at least 30 Trump administration officials—including Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and trade adviser Peter Navarro—had public Venmo accounts. And many of them still haven’t flipped the privacy switch.
For some, their open transactions offered a weirdly intimate look at their personal lives. Republican Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, for example, had Venmo activity suggesting he likes to gamble on major golf tournaments. One payment, dated April 6, 2021, was labeled “Masters 21 Donation.”
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio sent money to his sister with the note: “Some concert I didn’t even go to.”
“These people in Congress and on the executive branch teams, we think of them as people that have done a lot of things and know a lot of things,” application security specialist Bill Sempf told NOTUS. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re particularly internet savvy. It does not surprise me at all that you would find a large portion of Congress in there.”
Sure, some public Venmo payments—especially harmless ones like those of Landsman and Womack—might seem harmless at first. But then you remember: some of these people with wide-open accounts are either directly tied to, or are, the ones in charge of national security.
NOTUS also reported that it wasn’t exactly a digital manhunt to track them down. Many members of Congress or Cabinet members were friends with each other on the app, which made it easy to connect the dots.
“Besides the privacy violation that may lead to embarrassing or inappropriate details of your life and associates, one of the risks is that adversaries might target your contacts,” cybersecurity expert Katie Moussouris told NOTUS. “If they compromise a close contact, they are more likely to be successful sending a convincing phishing message that appears to be from that person.”
In other words, if you’re dumb enough to leave your Venmo wide open, you’re probably dumb enough to get played by someone trying to infiltrate U.S. intelligence. And if members of Trump’s Cabinet can’t even lock down their transaction history, what’s stopping them from casually dropping wartime intel in a Signal group chat? (Oh, right. They already did that.)
NOTUS said that even after being contacted, officials like Duffy, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Navarro still hadn’t made their friends list private. This might be an issue, considering some of their Venmo pals include journalists from CNN, Politico, and The New York Times.
These are not exactly great optics when your boss thinks all three outlets are the enemy of the people—and just exploded over Waltz having The Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg in his contacts.
To be fair, some officials did try to clean up the mess. NOTUS reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nuked his account once reporters started digging. Vice President JD Vance did the same after his Venmo was exposed back in July 2024.
Still, there were some truly troubling finds. Navarro is Venmo friends with resident grifter Laura Loomerwho’s Venmo pals with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. One Department of Government Efficiency staffer named Christopher Stanley had public transactions labeled “(.Y.) 😍” and others that were just … eggplant emojis. Classy.
Totally normal behavior from an administration that’s currently dismantling democracy and tanking the economy.
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