Judge Rules on Trump Officials’ Deleted Signal Messages: Preservation Ordered, Recovery Denied
A federal judge in Washington D.C. has delivered a mixed ruling concerning the use of the encrypted messaging app Signal by high-ranking Trump administration national security officials. While declining to compel the government to retrieve messages that may have already been deleted, the court *did* issue a preliminary injunction ordering officials to take steps to preserve any remaining messages at risk of auto-deletion and notify the acting U.S. archivist.
The legal challenge was initiated by the government watchdog American Oversight. The lawsuit arose after journalist Jeffrey Goldberg inadvertently found himself included in a Signal group chat where senior Trump officials discussed planned U.S. military operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen. American Oversight contended that using Signal, which allows messages to be automatically erased, for official communications violated federal record-keeping statutes. The group sought both the recovery of past, deleted messages and the preservation of any messages still existing.
In his decision issued Friday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg sided with the government regarding the recovery of *already lost* communications. Judge Boasberg stated that American Oversight had not demonstrated either that the relevant agencies’ record management protocols were “inadequate” or that the court possessed the means to “provide redress for already-deleted messages,” which the group had sought.
**Crucially, the judge found no basis to believe that ordering the government to exert more effort would yield results for messages already erased by Signal’s auto-delete function.** “Plaintiff has provided no reason to believe that ordering the Attorney General to use her ‘coercive power’ to ‘shak[e] the tree harder’ … would bear any fruit with respect to already-deleted messages,” Boasberg wrote, concluding that recovery was not a redressable request given the plaintiff’s own acknowledgments.
**However, the judge granted American Oversight a partial victory concerning messages that have not yet been erased.** He issued an injunction directing officials to notify the acting archivist of any messages on Signal that are vulnerable to automatic deletion. Judge Boasberg reasoned that the “looming erasure” of such messages constituted an “imminent destruction of records,” which the government *could* prevent by instructing officials to halt the deletion process.
“Because the looming erasure of automatically deleting Signal messages qualifies as such an imminent destruction of records, and because the Attorney General could prevent that destruction by instructing Government officials to halt the messages’ deletion, it remains possible for the Court to provide relief,” the judge wrote.
Reacting to the ruling, Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight, stated, “We expect immediate compliance — and if they drag their feet or fail to act, we are fully prepared to pursue further legal action to ensure government records, which belong to the public, are preserved and protected.”
Beyond the record-keeping dispute, the content of the Signal chat itself sparked significant security concerns. Goldberg’s reporting detailed exchanges, including messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, that discussed sensitive details like targets, weapons, and attack sequencing prior to the airstrikes. This prompted reviews by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general and raised questions from lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee about whether classified information was shared.
Hegseth has vehemently denied that any classified war plans were discussed in the Signal chat. The White House also denied that classified plans were shared and stated in March that its review of the incident had concluded. “This case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, adding that steps had been taken to prevent similar incidents.
The controversy surrounding officials’ use of Signal was further fueled a month later when reports surfaced that Hegseth had shared details of the attack in a *second* Signal chat that included his wife and brother.
