Newsletter: The Latest on Our Signalgate Lawsuit

After American Oversight filed suit against top Trump administration officials for their problematic use of a self-deleting messaging system, a judge ordered the officials to preserve the records.

Inquiriespress@americanoversight.org

Democratic accountability is at risk when public officials conduct government business on secretive platforms — particularly when those platforms are designed to erase records.

That’s why this week, following bombshell reporting that top Trump administration officials used the ephemeral messaging app Signal to discuss a military attack in Yemen — and mistakenly included the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in the group chat — we filed a lawsuit against top Trump officials for violations of the Federal Records Act (FRA) and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The suit, filed Tuesday, names 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 — who were all included in the Signal chat — as defendants.
It seeks to prevent further unlawful destruction of federal records and to compel the recovery of any records created through the officials’ unauthorized use of Signal.
We also filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to immediately halt any further destruction of federal records regarding the Trump administration’s use of Signal.

The court granted our request on Thursday, ordering Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Bessent, and Rubio to preserve all Signal communications from March 11 through March 15 in compliance with the FRA, which requires federal officials to preserve communications related to official government business.

Judge James Boasberg also ordered the government to file a status report by Monday describing the implementation of their preservation obligations.
Boasberg has faced attacks from Trump and his administration for blocking the president’s efforts to deport Venezuelan immigrants in another case he is presiding over. Those attacks have ramped up since Boasberg was randomly assigned to our lawsuit this week.
“It shouldn’t matter who is overseeing this case or any others. What matters is whether or not there is a violation of the law,” our interim executive director Chioma Chukwu told MSNBC Thursday.

According to the FRA, if federal records are unlawfully removed or destroyed and the agency head fails to initiate recovery efforts, the U.S. archivist — currently Rubio — must ask the attorney general to initiate a process to recover the records.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been a primary target of Trump’s second-term retribution tour, having been at the center of the criminal case against Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents when he left office in 2021. We’re still in court fighting for the release of the Justice Department’s report on the criminal investigation — read more about that case here.
Upon returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump wasted little time in purging NARA’s top leadership to make room for loyal officials like Rubio, who are more likely to do his bidding — or even to turn a blind eye to future legal violations.
Trump’s targeting of NARA, a nonpolitical, nonpartisan agency that ensures executive branch actions are documented and made available to the public, endangers both the preservation of government documents and our nation’s historical record remaining free from partisan political interference.

On the Records

Missouri AG Bailey’s Contacts with Anti-Abortion Rights Groups

We’ve been investigating public officials’ and conservative interest groups’ efforts to restrict abortion rights and undermine democracy by sabotaging ballot measures. Records we obtained from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office shed light on his interactions with far-right anti-abortion rights groups like Missouri Right to Life, Project Veritas, and the Heritage Foundation.

One document, a March 2023 memo prepared by Students for Life, outlined ways Bailey could strategically target medication abortion in Missouri by citing consumer protection laws. The records also suggest that Bailey met with Students for Life to discuss the memo.

This month, Bailey sent cease and desist orders to Missouri’s two Planned Parenthood affiliates, demanding they stop offering medication abortions — which the clinics have not been offering thanks to delays in approvals from the state health department.

Bailey’s orders falsely claimed the clinics were performing medication abortions without having approved complication plans. In warning letters Bailey sent to the affiliates, he claimed authority to stop actions that violate the state’s consumer protection laws, aligning with the strategy laid out in the Students for Life memo.
The orders are Bailey’s most recent effort to undercut the state’s recently passed ballot initiative enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.
Bailey’s actions also indicate the lengths he is willing to go to reject voters’ support for abortion rights, including exploiting misinformation about safe methods of pregnancy termination.

Newsletter: The Latest on Our Signalgate Lawsuit

On the Records

Missouri AG Bailey’s Contacts with Anti-Abortion Rights Groups

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DOGE

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