Judge orders agencies to preserve discussions in airstrike Signal chat
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The directive targets communications in a Signal chat with top intelligence and national security officials between March 11 and March 15 that discussed strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief was inadvertently added to that chat.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. ordered relevant agencies Thursday to preserve all communications between March 11 and March 15 in a Signal group chat containing discussions of sensitive military operations in Yemen this month, asking the agencies report back their preservation efforts next week.
The directive from Judge James Boasberg comes after bombshell reporting from The Atlantic this week in which the magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to the chat that discussed strike plans targeting the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, among others, were present in the exchange hosted on the encrypted messaging app.
Signal screenshots published by The Atlantic show National Security Advisor Mike Waltz added Goldberg. Waltz initially set messages to auto-delete after one week and later set them to delete after four weeks. The initial lawsuit was filed by American Oversight, a left-leaning advocacy group, arguing the Signal chat violates the Federal Records Act because the exchange between officials from March 11 to 15 about the strikes involved agency decision-making that requires preservation.
“As agreed by the parties in today’s … hearing, the Court ORDERS that: 1) Defendants shall promptly make best efforts to preserve all Signal communications from March 11-15, 2025; 2) By March 31, 2025, Defendants shall file a Status Report with declarations setting forth the steps that they have taken to implement such preservation; and 3) This Order shall expire on April 10, 2025, in the event that Defendants’ measures are satisfactory to the Court,” a court readout said.
The magazine published the conversation in two stories, initially withholding certain contents that could have endangered American pilots until several Trump officials denied the chat contained classified information. Current and former officials have said that the strike plans sent by Hegseth, which included attack times and strike capabilities like F-18 jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones, were classified, and should have been communicated over secure mediums instead of an open-source, encrypted messaging tool that allows messages to auto-disappear.
In a Thursday filing, an attorney for the defendants argued that the order was not warranted because the defendant agencies “are already taking steps to locate and preserve the Signal chat at issue, and at least one agency has already located, preserved, and copied into a federal record keeping system a partial version of the chat.” That specific agency is not named.
“This order marks an important step toward accountability,” American Oversight Interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said in a statement. “We are grateful for the judge’s ruling to halt any further destruction of these critical records. The public has a right to know how decisions about war and national security are made — and accountability doesn’t disappear just because a message was set to auto-delete.”
“The Trump Administration has and will continue to comply with all applicable record-keeping laws," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told Nextgov/FCW.
“The conversation was candid and sensitive, but as the president [and] national security adviser stated, no classified information was shared,” Gabbard said in a House Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday after the Atlantic released the additional message transcripts. “This was a standard update to the National Security Cabinet that was provided alongside updates that were given to foreign partners in the region. The Signal message app comes pre-installed on government devices.”
Gabbard’s statement that the Signal app comes “pre-installed” is inaccurate, people familiar with government mobile device policies told Nextgov/FCW Wednesday.
Attorney General Pam Bondi hinted Thursday the Justice Department won’t investigate the incident. “It was sensitive information, not classified, and inadvertently released,” she said.
“If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was in Hillary Clinton’s home; talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden’s garage that Hunter Biden had access to,” Bondi said. President Trump himself was indicted in 2023 for holding classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago residence after leaving office in his first term.
Senate Democrats have asked the high chamber’s Armed Services, Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees to hold separate hearings on the matter, Axios reported Thursday. Though the incident has drawn harsh criticism from Democrats and former officials, the GOP-led Congress holds the reins on any investigation. Multiple House Republican members are furious about the incident, according to a person familiar with the matter who was granted anonymity to be candid about the lawmakers’ private views.
Roger Wicker, the GOP chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and his Democrat counterpart Jack Reed asked the Pentagon’s top inspector general on Thursday to look into the “facts and circumstances” surrounding the incident. “If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information,” they wrote.
Israel provided sensitive intelligence from a human source in Yemen on a key Houthi operative targeted in the attack that was discussed in the Signal group, two U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Israeli officials complained privately to the U.S. officials that the texts became public, the WSJ report adds.