A federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to keep records of a Signal chat where top officials discussed bombing Houthi targets in Yemen. This decision follows a major controversy after a journalist from The Atlantic was mistakenly added to the conversation.
On March 27, Judge James Boasberg ruled that the Trump administration must preserve all messages exchanged between March 11 and March 15. These messages became public when The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed he had been invited to the chat.
Goldberg said he thought the invitation came from National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. When he joined, he saw high-ranking officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
At first, he wasn’t sure if the chat was real. But on March 15, when the bombings discussed in the chat actually took place, he realized it was authentic.
“I have never seen a breach quite like this,” Goldberg wrote in his initial article. “It is not uncommon for national security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters–not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action.”
The nonprofit group American Oversight quickly took legal action, asking for a temporary restraining order to stop the government from deleting the messages. The group argued that these messages should be saved and released to the public under the Federal Records Act of 1950.
This law requires the government to keep official records, including electronic messages. However, American Oversight claimed that Trump officials may have used Signal—a messaging app with end-to-end encryption—to avoid following the law.
“Defendants’ use of a non-classified commercial application even for such life-and-death matters as planning a military operation leads to the inevitable inference that Defendants must have used Signal to conduct other official government business,” its court filing said.
The Atlantic reported that the messages were set to delete automatically, some within a week and others in four weeks.
“This is nothing less than a systematic effort to evade the rules for record retention in the federal government,” lawyers for American Oversight wrote in a court filing. “There is no legitimate reason for this behaviour, which deprives the public and Congress of an ability to see the actions of government.”
The Trump administration denied that any classified information was leaked in the chat. However, The Atlantic later published more messages revealing the exact timing of the bombing campaign, including when F-18 fighter jets carrying missiles would take off.
This case raises serious questions about transparency and the use of encrypted messaging apps for government discussions. The legal battle over these messages is expected to continue.
