If you've never been in a SCIF, and 99.9 percent of Americans have not, it's basically like being put in a rubber room prison that's wrapped in a Faraday Cage. The whole point of the SCIF is that nothing gets in and nothing gets out that isn't planned and accounted for. There are a few hundred of these facilities scattered throughout official Washington--the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon obviously need them--but only a couple on the Hill.

You are not, under any circumstances, supposed to bring electronic devices into a SCIF. You can understand why. Members of Congress are not like the president, getting their phones rigorously checked by security personnel for signs of compromise. The device protocol for the average member of Congress aren't that much more security-conscious than your mom's.

So, in an effort to defend President Trump, Gaetz and company stormed the SCIF to disrupt the hearing and they didn't just byob their own devices--they used them to show off on Twitter. [...]

[A]s Mieke Eoyang, a former congressional staffer who worked on national security issues, put it this way: House Republicans endangered national security in an attempt to cover for President Trump.