Overview

• Boasberg noted American Oversight’s own filings admitted destroyed Signal messages could not be recovered, leading the court to deny expansive preservation demands.
• He tasked acting National Archivist and Secretary of State Marco Rubio with asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to secure any Signal chats at risk of auto-deletion.
• American Oversight had sued five Trump Cabinet members, alleging their use of Signal for official discussions violated federal records retention obligations.
• The lawsuit followed revelations that a group chat about a planned airstrike on Yemen’s Houthi rebels accidentally included Atlantic editor Jeffery Goldberg and involved more than a dozen senior officials.
• In parallel, the Pentagon’s inspector general opened an inquiry in April under a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee request into the administration’s encrypted messaging practices.