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"Oops, we accidentally invited an uncleared individual into the chat, so I'll use my OCA powers to say nothing we said was classified" is not how it works. He can undoubtedly get away with it, but there is not one person defending this as a nothingburger who wouldn't be outraged if it had been Democrats who did this. (Indeed, I suspect that the Venn diagram of "This Signal chat is a nothingburger drummed up by the Fake News" and "Hillary should have gone to prison for her private server" is practically a circle.)
It was intended to be an unclassified chat, so the presence of the uncleared individual actually doesn't figure into whether saying something that should have been classified was some sort of violation. But the OCA can say it's not classified even if it should have been; that IS how it works.
I've seen people who defended this as a nothingburger AND said Hillary's was a nothingburger too.
Personally I agree with whoever said the was a "veggieburger". Hillary's was still worse -- her violation was deliberate and systematic. And information that's been coming out has made this incident even less significant; the recommendation to use Signal for this sort of thing came out during the Biden administration, so this isn't some sort of Trumpy dumbness. I don't see how to square that with the Federal Records Act, but maybe there's a way. Which leaves two problems. Inviting the journalist, which was presumably an ordinary screw up, and including the timeline and perhaps the assessment of European capabilities. The timeline would have been a problem if they'd invited Aziz Nasirzadeh to the chat; fortunately they didn't. The assessment of European capabilities, without any supporting details, is of fairly low value.
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