Members of President Donald Trump’s administration are now being sued in connection with the texting of sensitive plans for a military strike against Yemen’s Houthis to a Signal group chat that included a journalist.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in D.C. federal court by American Oversight, a government watchdog group based in the District that focuses on “enforcing the public’s right to government records,” according to its website.
Among the defendants named in the suit were: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“We are very, very concerned … that they’re not even preserving those communications,” said Chioma Chukwu, interim executive director of American Oversight.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, according to an article posted online Monday by The Atlantic, appeared to have mistakenly added the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat that included 18 senior administration officials discussing the plans for the strike.
The use of the messaging app Signal to discuss a sensitive operation has opened the administration to blistering criticism.
“We’re trying to prevent the administration from using encrypted messaging apps to communicate about such sensitive topics,” Chukwu said. “We will need to explain to the court why this is so important and … why this is something the court should intervene in to ensure that they immediately cease using encrypted messaging apps to discuss such highly classified information.”
Waltz said he was not sure how Goldberg ended up in the chat and senior administration officials have struggled to explain why a publicly available app was used for such a delicate matter.
Signal, which can delete messages automatically, provides encrypted communications but it can be hacked and it is not approved for conveying classified information.
“If they are deleting that, then that should be a cause for alarm for all Americans,” Chukwu said. “Those are records that belong to the American people.”
According to the lawsuit, administration officials who used Signal failed to follow the Federal Records Act, which requires federal agencies to create, manage and keep official records of government business.
“We anticipate that … those named in the lawsuit will challenge us,” she said.
American Oversight is asking the court to rule that messages sent through Signal “in the course of conducting agency business” are subject to the Federal Records Act, and that failing to preserve such messages is against the law.
They are also calling for “the recovery or restoration of any deleted” messages “to the extent possible.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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