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President Donald Trump listens as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., claims that members of President Donald Trump‘s cabinet breached federal law by utilizing the encrypted Signal messaging app to discuss military operations in the Middle East.
The 16-page document, submitted by the nonprofit government transparency group American Oversight, accuses Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and several Trump administration officials of violating the Federal Records Act (FRA) during an extended group chat about planning and “coordinating imminent U.S. military strikes in Yemen.”
The conversations in question occurred between March 11 and March 15, according to the lawsuit. The government’s use of the popular messaging app was first reported this week when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he was accidentally added to the group chat by national security adviser Michael Waltz.
Signal is widely used for its encryption functions. The app is also well-known for its ability to automatically delete messages after a certain period of time, subject to user specifications. The use of the auto-delete feature in the chat, the plaintiffs say, runs afoul of federal law.
“According to the Atlantic Article, at least one participant in the Signal chat enabled the function that makes messages disappear after set time limits,” the lawsuit claims. “Defendant Waltz set at least some messages to disappear after one week, and at least some messages to disappear after four weeks.”
So far, the plaintiffs allege, at least one message in the chat was already deleted by the time Goldberg reported on his experience.
That lone deletion — and the likelihood of other potentially more forthcoming — violates several federal laws and implicates the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as well, according to the lawsuit.
“Defendants, as members of the Signal chat, know or reasonably should know that one or more messages in the Signal chat were or remain subject to automatic deletion in violation of the FRA and implementing rules and regulations of Defendants’ respective agencies, the lawsuit reads. “Defendants have failed and continue to fail to implement measures to prevent the automatic deletion of messages in the Signal chat, which violates their obligations under the FRA.”
The filing goes on, at length:
American Oversight has regularly requested DoD’s communications through FOIA, including Signal messages, and it will continue to do so in the future. Upon information and belief, under current DoD recordkeeping rules and practices, officials do not forward Signal messages, including messages from the Signal chat, to their official email accounts, thereby barring American Oversight and other FOIA requesters from obtaining responsive records to which they are otherwise entitled under FOIA, particularly if such Signal messages have enabled the disappearing function.
To hear the plaintiffs tell it, the use of Signal by federal agencies violates the FRA and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a statute that broadly governs administrative agencies. The alleged APA violation is due to the “final” nature of the deleted messages, in question, the lawsuit claims.
“Signal is not an authorized system for preserving federal records and does not comply with recordkeeping requirements,” the filing goes on. “Messages in the Signal chat about official government actions, including, but not limited to, national security deliberations, are federal records and must be preserved in accordance with federal statutes, and agency directives, rules, and regulations.”
The lawsuit also lays out a specific set of allegations against Secretary of State Marco Rubio, due to his current dual role as the acting Archivist of the United States and therefore the head of the National Archives. The use of Signal is at least a double whammy against Rubio because he has “an independent non-discretionary duty under the FRA to initiate a recovery action” under the NARA under the present circumstances, the plaintiffs allege.
And, at least so far, Rubio has failed to exercise his mandatory duties under NARA, the lawsuit claims. This alleged failure, according to American Oversight, also violates the APA for various reasons.
The filing generally purports to be an effort “to prevent the unlawful destruction of federal records and to compel Defendants to fulfill their legal obligations to preserve and recover federal records created through unauthorized use of Signal for sensitive national security decision-making.”
The lawsuit specifically requests a bevy of declaratory judgments that the group chat participants violated federal law, that the messages in question are subject to FRA, and that failure to maintain the messages violated the FRA. The plaintiffs are also seeking an injunction that orders the defendants to comply with their duties under federal records laws, and that might lead to “the recovery or restoration of any deleted or destroyed materials to the extent possible.”
