Pentagon Inspector General Launches Investigation into Hegseth’s Signal Use
The Defense Department’s independent watchdog is investigating Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal and compliance with records retention policies — the subject of American Oversight’s recent lawsuit.
The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced Thursday that the office will review Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal, including his compliance with records retention requirements.
The issue of Signal’s autodelete function — and what that means for record preservation and accountability — is central to American Oversight’s recent lawsuit against Hegseth and other members of the now-infamous Signalgate group chat. Our lawsuit argues that the officials violated federal records laws by using Signal for high-level national security deliberations.
The inspector general’s announcement of the investigation follows widespread national criticism over the officials’ use of Signal — a non-governmental platform with auto-deletion capabilities — for coordinating sensitive military attack plans in Yemen. Senators had requested an investigation of the officials’ use of an unclassified platform to discuss classified information, and how such information was shared with those without proper clearance (in the case of the Yemen group chat at the center of the scandal, that was Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg). But it was American Oversight’s lawsuit that drew significant attention to the alarming records-retention implications of such communications.
Public records laws require officials and personnel to forward all work-related communications to official systems for proper archival or to take other steps to preserve their content. Our lawsuit against Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Secretary of State and acting Archivist Marco Rubio raised serious concerns about the officials’ compliance with these requirements for ephemeral messages sent on apps like Signal.
American Oversight’s lawsuit aims to prevent future unlawful destruction of government records and to compel the recovery of any records created through the officials’ unauthorized use of Signal. Last week, a judge granted a temporary restraining order in the suit, halting the deletion of critical records and requiring the defendants to preserve any Signal communications from March 11–15, 2025.