Organization sues Trump administration officials over Signal chat records

A government oversight organization in the United States is suing national security leaders, accusing them of using the encrypted messaging application Signal to discuss military operations and then deleting chat records, which may have violated the Federal Records Act.

The non-profit organization American Oversight filed a lawsuit on Tuesday (March 25) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing five senior officials of the Trump administration and an agency of “illegally destroying federal records,” thereby violating the Federal Records Act and impeding the organization’s ability to access government documents.

The defendants in the lawsuit include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State and Acting Archivist of the United States Marco Rubio, as well as the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The lawsuit involves someone inadvertently adding The Atlantic’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, into a Signal chat group that contained potentially classified information related to current military operations.

American Oversight alleges that The Atlantic reported that the aforementioned national security officials, along with Vice President Vance, and White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, discussed war actions in this private group chat, and according to Goldberg, the messages in the chat would disappear after a certain number of days. The lawsuit claims that this poses a serious risk to democratic accountability, especially when these platforms are designed to delete records.

In a statement, Chioma Chukwu, the Interim Executive Director of American Oversight, said that the group chat behavior could constitute a crime, stating: “War planning should not be happening in emoji-filled, self-destructing group chats, but within secure facilities designed to protect national interests – any responsible government official should know this. Our lawsuit aims to ensure that these federal records are preserved and recovered. The American people deserve answers, and we won’t stop until we get them.”

Goldberg’s report on this matter on Monday has already sparked a series of controversies, including a Senate hearing on Tuesday where Gabbard and other national security officials were questioned. However, Gabbard told senators that the U.S. war plans against the Houthi rebels in Yemen discussed in the Signal chat did not include classified information.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton also defended the practice on Tuesday, stating in an interview with Fox News that the Biden administration had authorized the use of Signal as a communication tool that complies with presidential record-keeping rules, and this practice has continued to the present day.