Attorney General Pam Bondi signaled on Thursday that there was unlikely to be a criminal investigation into the sharing of military operation details in an unsecured text group, declaring that the specifics of when fighter jets would depart and when bombs would fall were “not classified.”
Ms. Bondi, speaking at a news conference in Virginia, was asked about the public debate surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he sent details of a coming attack on rebels in Yemen to senior administration officials in a Signal group chat that accidentally included a magazine editor.
“It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released,” Ms. Bondi said, while praising the military operation that ensued.
“What we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission,” she said, before quickly accusing Democrats from previous administrations of mishandling classified information.
“If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was in Hillary Clinton’s home,” she said. “Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage, that Hunter Biden had access to.”
The Justice Department opened investigations into Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Biden in those instances, but neither ultimately faced criminal charges. She did not mention the prosecution of Donald J. Trump over his handling of classified documents after his first term in office — a case that was ultimately abandoned when he won a second term.
In this case, Ms. Bondi seemed to be ruling out any similar investigation to determine all the facts.
Dating back to at least the Reagan administration, the government has considered the details of “military plans, weapons or operations” to be classified.
The F.B.I., along with the Justice Department, could still investigate the matter, but agents and prosecutors typically do not pursue cases if the information is not classified.
Under the Espionage Act, it is possible for people to be charged with crimes for mishandling national defense information that is not classified, but such prosecutions are very rare.
This month, hours before the military strikes against Houthi targets, Mr. Hegseth texted the group the plan of attack, including the time when “the first bombs will definitely drop.”
After the attack was carried out, the details of the text conversation were revealed by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, who was accidentally included in the conversation among the senior officials.
Mr. Hegseth and other senior officials have argued that the information he shared was not classified, and that it was ultimately up to his department to decide what of its information should be considered classified.
National security experts said that argument failed a test of basic common sense about the danger of letting military plans leak before an operation, and that it went against longtime practice among military and intelligence agencies.
Democratic lawmakers sparred over the issue with Trump administration officials at a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee that “no sources, methods, locations or war plans” were shared.
In the same hearing, Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, scoffed at claims that the information was not classified. “You all know that’s a lie,” he said. “It’s a lie to the country.”
