Federal judge refuses to retrieve deleted Signal messages from several Trump administration officials
Goldberg was the one who revealed the existence of the Trump Administration officials' group chat, adding that the one who accidentally added him to the conversation was then-national security adviser Mike Waltz.
James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said Friday that it was too late to order the recovery of deleted messages on the Signal appby several senior members of the U.S. president's administration Donald Trump, largely rejecting a request for intervention made by the watchdog group American Oversight. On the other hand, Boasberg did direct both the acting national archivist and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to request Attorney General Pam Bondi to take appropriate steps to be able to preserve Signal messages across the administration that are still at risk of deletion.
"At this juncture, the Court largely denies American Oversight’s slew of requests and will instead grant only narrower relief," Boasberg wrote. Similarly, even as the federal judge ordered Rubio to ask Bondi to act on those messages "that have not yet been fully recovered," Boasberg stressed that the attorney general has all the power to ignore such a request should she deem it appropriate.
Issuing the order was futile
The watchdog group American Oversight, which often files lawsuits to access different types of government records, demanded five Trump administration officials after it was revealed that they discussed a military operation in a group chat on Signal, and mistakenly included The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. That group had asked Boasberg to order the five officials not only to preserve any and all communications made on the app, but also to recover the deleted messages. However, the federal judge explained that the group's own representation to the courtmade it clear that the deleted messages on Signal could not be recovered, so issuing the order was futile.
"Although Plaintiff tries to walk that stance back — claiming in its Reply that recovery is feasible ‘[r]egardless of Signal’s statement of policy,’ — that belated assertion wilts in the face of its repeated claims to the contrary in both its Amended Complaint and Motion," Boasberg explained.
The five defendants
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