Following Reports of New Signal Chats, American Oversight Blasts ‘Grossly Inadequate’ Court-Ordered Declarations in Trump Administration’s Signal Use

On Friday, American Oversight filed its opposition to the Trump administration’s court-ordered status report and declarations in its case concerning the improper use of the encrypted messaging app Signal, arguing that they are grossly inadequate in addressing the unlawful destruction of federal records and suggest that relevant records may have already been deleted. 

The filing follows alarming new reporting in Politico that senior administration officials set up “at least 20” additional Signal group chats, raising serious concerns about how widely Signal has been used to discuss sensitive and classified information and evade federal recordkeeping. The filing urges the court to either compel the government to provide more detailed and comprehensive declarations or permit American Oversight to conduct limited discovery to uncover the full extent of records violations.

“The Trump administration has confirmed what we feared: Key records that should have been preserved were deleted and are now lost to history,” said Chioma Chukwu, interim Executive Director of American Oversight. “Using disappearing messages to conduct highly sensitive matters of national security isn’t just unlawful — it’s a calculated attempt to shut out Congress, the courts, and the public. We deserve a government we can trust. We demand transparency, and not secrecy — and we’ll keep fighting to uncover the truth through every legal means available.”

The legal challenge also comes amid news that — following American Oversight’s successful lawsuit — the Department of Defense Acting Inspector General has launched an investigation that will include an inquiry into the administration’s “compliance with classification and records retention requirements.” 

In the wake of the scandal, the Trump administration has ignored the grave failures of its senior national security officials. Following reporting in The Atlantic, the White House appointed Elon Musk — a reported avid Signal user — to investigate how editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to the Signal group chat at issue in American Oversight’s lawsuit. According to reports, the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency has for months been using Signal to coordinate its work related to dismantling federal agencies and slashing government benefits. After American Oversight filed a separate lawsuit against DOGE and moved for a preservation order over concerns that DOGE records would be destroyed, DOGE revealed a new “records retention policy” purportedly governing DOGE officials’ communications, including those belonging to Musk. On Wednesday, the court granted American Oversight’s motion, ordering DOGE to preserve records responsive to the group’s FOIA requests. 

Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi — who has broad authority to investigate potential violations of the Federal Records Act — demonstrated a clear unwillingness to act. Rather than addressing the Trump administration’s deliberate and systemic violations of federal recordkeeping laws, the White House has focused solely on purging staff deemed insufficiently loyal.