Court Orders Trump Administration to Preserve Signal Messages in American Oversight Lawsuit

Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a key request in a lawsuit brought by nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, ordering the preservation of encrypted Signal messages sent by top Trump administration officials during high-level national security deliberations. The motion asked the court to order the defendants, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Secretary of State and acting Archivist Marco Rubio, to comply with their mandatory obligations under the Federal Records Act. The judge ordered them to preserve all Signal communications from March 11 through March 15, 2025.

“This order marks an important step toward accountability,” said American Oversight Interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu. “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. American Oversight remains committed to bringing full transparency to this case and revealing to the public the dangerous security vulnerabilities this administration has created.”

The emergency motion followed Tuesday’s lawsuit seeking to prevent further unlawful destruction of federal records and to compel the recovery of any records created through the unauthorized use of Signal. The judge ordered the government to file a status report on Monday, March 31, with declarations describing the agencies’ implementation of their preservation obligation. The temporary restraining order itself (delivered from the bench, to be followed up in written form) will last for the standard 14 days.

American Oversight is seeking a full recovery of unlawfully deleted records and court enforcement of federal records retention laws. According to reports, the officials used Signal’s disappearing message function to discuss sensitive military planning, including operations involving Vice President J.D. Vance and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

Earlier this week, the Atlantic reported that top national security officials discussed war operations and confirmed tactical strikes in Yemen in a private Signal group chat that included editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who had been added to the group apparently by mistake. According to Goldberg, messages in the group chat were set to disappear after a certain number of days. American Oversight’s lawsuit underscores the serious risks to democratic accountability when public officials conduct government business on secretive, untraceable platforms — particularly when those platforms are designed to erase records automatically.

American Oversight’s motion for a temporary restraining order is available here and the full complaint is available here.