Several top Trump administration officials were sued by a watchdog group Tuesday following a shocking leak from The Atlantic revealing its editor-in-chief was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat discussing U.S. military operations.
The suit, filed by nonpartisan and nonprofit organization American Oversight, lists Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the National Archives and Records Administration as defendants.
It alleges that the defendants failed “to meet their obligations under the Federal Records Act” by using Signal to communicate and plan “active military operations from March 11, 2025 through March 15, 2025.”
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Furthermore, the watchdog group argues that “Signal is not an authorized system for preserving federal records and does not comply with recordkeeping requirements” as messages on the app can be deleted.
The lawsuit also claims that the defendants’ use of Signal, as outlined in The Atlantic’s article, “presents a substantial risk that they have used and continue to use Signal in other contexts.” By doing so, the suit argues that records that were subject to federal regulations may have been created but were “not being persevered as required by those statutes.”
In a press release on their website, American Oversight indicated that they hope this lawsuit will prevent “further unlawful destruction of federal records” and pave a path instead toward “the recovery of any records” created on Signal.
“This reported disclosure of sensitive military information in a Signal group chat that included a journalist is a five-alarm fire for government accountability and potentially a crime,” American Oversight Interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said in a statement posted to the organization’s website.
“War planning doesn’t belong in emoji-laden disappearing group chats. It belongs in secure facilities designed to safeguard national interests — something any responsible government official should have known,” they continued. “Our lawsuit seeks to ensure these federal records are preserved and recovered. The American people deserve answers and we won’t stop until we get them.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the offices of all defendants for comment.
In a jaw-dropping revelation Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that he was accidentally added to a Signal group chat by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and then privy to seemingly sensitive discussions on U.S. military operations in Yemen. Top officials including Vice President JD Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, and Gabbard, among others, were all seemingly in the chat and were coordinating a plan to strike Houthi militant targets.
“It’s embarrassing, yes. We’re going to get to the bottom of it,” Waltz told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday night. “I just talked to Elon [Musk] on the way here. We have the best technical minds looking at how this happened,” he continued while taking “full responsibility” for the incident.
