US Agencies Ordered by Judge to Preserve Recent Signal Chats (1)

A federal judge on Thursday ordered US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Trump administration officials to preserve all Signal app communications from a five-day period earlier this month in a civil suit over the government’s ongoing group chat controversy.

US District Chief Judge James Boasberg in Washington issued the temporary order in a lawsuit brought by the liberal-leaning advocacy group American Oversight. The nonprofit alleges participants in a group chat about a planned US military attack in Yemen violated records-preservation laws by sending messages that are designed to disappear.

The order covers all Signal chats from March 11 to March 15, the period when the Yemen attack plans were being discussed. Boasberg said his order will expire on April 10 “in the event that defendants’ measures are satisfactory to the court.”

During a hearing Thursday, a US Justice Department lawyer didn’t object to a temporary order, telling the judge that the government is already working to ensure all policies at the agencies named in the suit comply with the Federal Records Act.

Read More: How Trump Team’s Signal Chat Violated Security Norms: QuickTake

The lawsuit was filed following an explosive Atlantic article revealing that its editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added by mistake to the group Signal chat involving top US officials and White House advisers discussing details of the planned attack.

The complaint names five cabinet officials identified in Goldberg’s article as being part of the Signal thread: Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of the State Marco Rubio.

Hours before the hearing, Justice Department lawyers urged the judge in a court filing not to impose a temporary restraining order, saying that private groups like American Oversight don’t have a right to sue under the Federal Records Act, which governs the creation, management and disposal of such documents.

The government also argued a court order wasn’t warranted because a copy of the disputed Signal chat has already been located and preserved though a search of the Treasury Secretary’s phone.

The case is American Oversight v. Hegseth, 25-cv-883, US District Court, District of Columbia.

(Updates with details from hearing.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth, Sara Forden

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