(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to preserve the contents of the chat in which top national security officials used the Signal app to discuss military strikes in Yemen as they were taking place earlier this month.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the top cabinet officials named in a lawsuit by the government transparency group American Oversight to retain any messages sent and received over Signal between March 11 and March 15.
Benjamin Sparks, a lawyer representing American Oversight, raised concerns that “these messages are imminent danger of destruction” due to settings within Signal that can be set to delete messages automatically — prompting Judge Boasberg to order the Trump administration file a sworn declaration by this Monday to ensure the messages are preserved.
The lawsuit — which names Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the National Archives as defendants — asked a federal judge to declare the use of Signal unlawful and order the cabinet members to preserve the records immediately, as Signal’s deleting of messages violates governmental record-keeping requirements.
The use of the Signal group chat was revealed Monday by The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who said he was inadvertently added to the chat as top national security officials, including Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, were discussing the military operation.
According to screenshots of the Signal messages published by The Atlantic, the messages were set to disappear after a certain timeframe. Originally, the messages were set to disappear after one week. Then, according to screenshots of the messages published by the magazine, on March 15 — after Hegseth sent the first operational update — the messages were set to disappear after four weeks.
Judge Boasberg declined, for now, to order administration officials to disclose if Signal had been used by the Trump administration in a wider context.
“I don’t think at this point that that’s something that I would be prepared to order,” he said.
On the heels of Trump early Thursday accusing Boasberg on social media of “grabbing the ‘Trump Cases’ all to himself,” the judge began the hearing by providing a detailed description of the D.C. District Court’s automated system for assigning cases, including how each judge is allotted “electronic cards” to ensure cases are fairly distributed.
“That’s how it works, and that’s how all cases continue to be assigned in this course,” Judge Boasberg said.
Boasberg earlier this month temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport more than 200 alleged gang members to El Salvador without due process, leading the White House to call for his impeachment and publicly attack him as a “Democrat activist” and a “radical left lunatic.”
Lawyers for the Department of Defense, prior to Thursday’s hearing, filed a declaration stating that they have requested that a copy of the Signal messages in question be forwarded to an official DOD account so they can be preserved.
A second declaration, from a lawyer for the Treasury Department, stated that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, along with Bessent’s chief of staff, has retained all messages beginning with Mike Waltz’s messages on March 15.
Trump and other top administration officials have downplayed the use of the Signal to discuss the attack, saying classified information was not shared in the chat, despite the exchange including information on the weapons systems being used and the timing of the strikes.
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