Who Deleted CIA Director Ratcliffe’s Signal Messages? And Other Questions from the Trump Administration’s Recent Declarations

Last week, a federal court gave top Trump officials a second try at providing information about their efforts to preserve messages from the Signalgate group chat. But the new court-ordered declarations submitted by the agencies earlier this week leave open serious questions about their efforts — and what we learned from the CIA’s declaration is troubling. 

Among the revelations include the fact that not only did the CIA fail to preserve any messages, but that someone had proactively deleted messages, potentially even after a court order. The potentially willful destruction of valuable records at the center of public outcry — and ongoing litigation — is a sign of an administration that believes that the rules don’t apply to it and that secrecy is the best way to govern. And that has frightening implications about the public’s ability to hold the Trump administration accountable for its actions.

Background

In our ongoing lawsuit over top Trump officials’ use of the autodeleting Signal app for high-level military coordination, we had asked the court to have four of the five defendants provide more information than what had been included in their original court-ordered declarations. Representatives of 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 — had all submitted statements in response to the court’s March 27 temporary restraining order to halt the deletion of the Signal messages and to “promptly make best efforts to preserve” them.

But only the Treasury’s declaration provided full information about when the defendants took action to recover messages and about what was saved. (Unfortunately, according to the Treasury, only images of “existing messages” from the phones of Bessent and his chief of staff were preserved — and those existing messages did not include anything before March 15.) The other declarations only mentioned that, for instance, screenshots of “available” messages had been taken.

The CIA’s declaration said that “residual administrative content” had been retrieved, but what was meant by that was not clear.

We filed our opposition, leading the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to require supplemental declarations from the other four agencies, which were filed earlier this week. And those supplemental declarations reveal that there are still some significant concerns, starting with the CIA director’s admissions — as well as some major questions.

CIA Director Ratcliffe’s Declaration

The supplemental declaration filed by the CIA on April 14 raised a number of red flags. Let’s start with the timeline of CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s efforts to preserve messages.

American Oversight sued the administration on March 25, and the court order to preserve records from the Signal group chat came on March 27. The deadline for defendants to submit their declarations was March 31. But according to the agency’s supplemental declaration, efforts to retrieve and save any messages didn’t occur until March 31.

That certainly is not “prompt,” as ordered by the court. Nor could it be considered Ratcliffe’s “best efforts,” as we outline in the response we submitted on April 16. The CIA’s supplemental declaration specifies what was meant by “residual administrative content,” revealing that this was merely the name of the chat (“Houthi PC small group”) and two notifications from March 26 and March 28 related to changes to the chat’s administrative settings (more on that below). This means that not a single message was preserved, despite the CIA having previously said that a litigation hold notice had been issued to ensure related documents and information was preserved.

The absence of any preserved messages from the CIA is troubling enough. But the timeline is particularly damning. According to reporting from the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who had initiated the group chat, had on March 15 set the messages to auto-delete after four weeks. In case you’re wondering, four weeks from March 15 was April 12 — well after Ratcliffe’s efforts to recover messages on March 31.

Moreover, the two notifications about administrative settings on March 26 (the day after American Oversight sued) and March 28 (the day after the court’s temporary restraining order) indicates that someone with access to the chat was making changes to the subject of ongoing litigation. It’s unclear if that person (or people) were one of the defendants in our lawsuit, but what is clear is that the defendants, as chat participants, were able to see these changes taking place. The modification or deletion of electronically stored information that is the subject of litigation risks violating the federal rules of procedure, established case law, and a court’s direct order telling them to preserve evidence — and carries the potential for sanctions.

Which brings us to our open questions.

Open Questions About Signalgate Message Preservation (or Deletion)

What were the administrative setting changes referenced in the CIA’s supplemental declaration?

Those changes came not only in the midst of public outrage about the Signalgate scandal, but also smack in the middle of ongoing litigation. It’s unclear what those changes were, as the supplemental declaration only specifies them as “relating to changes in participants’ administrative settings in this group chat, such as profile names and message settings.” But if those changes involved setting new auto-delete functions, that could lead to additional Federal Records Act violations.

Who made those administrative setting changes?

As noted above, we don’t know whether those changes were made by one of the defendants in American Oversight’s lawsuit, NSA Waltz, or another participant.

What has been deleted, and when?

We know from the CIA’s supplemental declaration that no messages from March 11 to 15 had been preserved. And we know from the Treasury’s first declaration on March 31 that only messages from March 15 were preserved by that agency. But what about the other agencies — the Pentagon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department? They each indicate that an “image” or a “screenshot” was taken of the Signal chat, but they don’t specify what, if any, messages are visible in those images.

Why This Matters

These are not minor concerns. The Federal Records Act requires federal officials, including the defendants in this lawsuit, to preserve communications related to official government business. That’s a key way we hold our leaders accountable for their actions. It does not matter that the messages in this particular chat would likely have been classified and protected from disclosure through avenues like the Freedom of Information Act — official communications must be preserved, including for the historical record. We know from other reporting that the use of Signal was more widespread than this once instance, and we also know that members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been using ephemeral communication tools, including Signal, to communicate as they’ve worked to keep their assault on the federal government shrouded in secrecy. 

The public has a right to know not only whether its government is protecting our national security by communicating about sensitive issues in appropriate and official channels, but also that it is following the law and respecting our system of checks and balances — particularly at a time when the administration is facing possible contempt for its violations of a court order halting deportations. The revelations from the CIA’s supplemental declaration are alarming, but there are serious unanswered questions regarding the actions of all the leaders of all the agencies in our lawsuit — and we’ll keep fighting to get answers for the public.