Trump Cabinet Officials in Group Chat Flap Face a Lawsuit (1)

Five members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet were accused in a lawsuit of violating US laws meant to safeguard government records by using the encrypted messaging platform Signal to communicate about official business.

The complaint filed late Tuesday in Washington federal court follows an explosive Atlantic article revealing that its editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added by mistake to a group Signal chat involving top US officials and White House advisers discussing imminent military action in Yemen.

The White House responded to the article by saying that the text thread appeared authentic, but sought to downplay the significance of an outsider being included in sensitive, high-level discussions without anyone realizing.

American Oversight, the liberal-leaning advocacy group that brought the lawsuit, contends that by using Signal — an app that can be set to auto-delete messages — officials violated federal laws meant to preserve records, including written communications.

The case is before US District Chief Judge James Boasberg through the court’s random assignment system. It’s the latest high-profile issue to land with Boasberg, who has faced personal attacks from Trump and his allies for his handling of a legal challenge to the administration’s push to rapidly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Pete Hegseth

Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

The complaint is against five cabinet officials identified in Goldberg’s article as being part of the Signal text thread: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of the State Marco Rubio. The National Archives and Records Administration also was named as a defendant.

A White House spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did representatives for the named defendants.

American Oversight wants a judge to declare that the officials violated records laws and to order them to comply going forward, including making a referral to the US attorney general to enforce the laws and try to recover any deleted messages.

“Our lawsuit seeks to ensure these federal records are preserved and recovered,” American Oversight’s interim executive director Chioma Chukwu said in a statement. “The American people deserve answers and we won’t stop until we get them.”

The case is American Oversight v. Hegseth, 25-cv-883, US District Court, District of Columbia.

(Updated with information about the judge assigned to the case.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth, Peter Blumberg

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