Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Trump administration officials are being sued by a government watchdog group for using Signal to discuss military plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen.
The big picture: American Oversight alleges in its lawsuit that was filed in a D.C. federal court that the chat on the unclassified commercial app that mistakenly included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg violated federal records laws.
Driving the news: The suit names Hegseth and officials including National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, CIA director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Marco Rubio in his capcities as secretary of state and acting archivist.
- American Oversight said in a statement it’s seeking to “recover unlawfully deleted messages and prevent further destruction.”
- “The Federal Records Act requires federal officials to preserve communications related to official government business,” the nonprofit said.
- “Generally, agencies ensure retention of messages sent on apps like Signal by setting policies requiring officials and personnel to forward them to official systems for proper archival or take other steps to preserve their content.”
What they’re saying: American Oversight interim executive director Chioma Chukwu said in a statement the “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.”
- Representatives for the Pentagon declined to comment because they said they don’t discuss ongoing litigation. Representatives for the DNI, CIA and NARA did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment in the evening.
The big picture: National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said Tuesday he takes “full responsibility” for the incident, telling Fox News he built the group chat and “we made a mistake.” He said lessons were learned and “we’re not using” the encrypted app anymore.
Read the lawsuit in full, via DocumentCloud:
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