US Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order against deleting any messages in the controversial chat.
A federal judge has announced he will order the United States government to preserve messages from a Signal chat where top officials discussed plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.
That chat has since become the subject of a national controversy, stemming from the accidental inclusion of a journalist from The Atlantic magazine in the discussion, which revealed sensitive military information.
On Thursday, Judge James Boasberg ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump must take measures to keep records of the full conversation between March 11 and March 15, when the journalist had access to the conversation.
The judge’s order stems from concerns that the messages might be deleted, in violation of federal records law.
A nonprofit watchdog called American Oversight had filed for a temporary restraining order to prevent the deletion of the original messages, which were ultimately published this week in The Atlantic.
It argued that the messages should be released to the public. It also noted that The Atlantic had reported the Signal messages were set to automatically delete – some within a week, others within 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 behavior, which deprives the public and Congress of an ability to see the actions of government.”
The nonprofit based its argument on the Federal Records Act of 1950, which creates a blueprint for government transparency.
That law creates standards for preserving and releasing government documents, and it has been updated to include electronic documents as well.
But American Oversight has argued that the Trump administration may be using Signal – a messaging app with end-to-end encryption – to avoid compliance with 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.
A representative for the Trump administration reassured Judge Boasberg that measures were already in place to collect and preserve any remaining messages.
The use of Signal for top-secret exchanges came to light on Monday when The Atlantic published the first in a series of articles on the subject from editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
The journalist explained that he received an invitation from someone appearing to be National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to join a conversation on the app.
Upon accepting the invitation, Goldberg found himself among some of the highest-ranking officials in the US: Accounts appearing to belong to Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth were participating in the chat.
Goldberg said he realised the conversation was authentic – and not an elaborate set-up – when, on March 15, the bombings that were revealed in the chat happened in real life.
“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 Trump administration responded to the article by denying any confidential information had been released in the chat.
But Goldberg responded with a second article sharing more messages that revealed the timings for the bombing campaign, as well as when the F-18 planes carrying the missiles would launch.
“Look, look, it’s all a witch-hunt,” Trump said at an event on Wednesday. He has rejected calls to dismiss Waltz and Hegseth or call for an apology. He has also blamed Signal, saying the app “could be defective”.
The interim executive director of American Oversight, Chioma Chukwu, praised Judge Boasberg’s decision to halt any destruction of the messages on Thursday.
“We are grateful for the judge’s bench 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,” Chukwu said in a statement.
