U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg has been assigned to a lawsuit alleging that the federal government violated the Federal Records Act and the Administrative Procedure Act in its communications on the app Signal.
Boasberg is also overseeing a case against President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to illegal immigrant gang members.
The group American Oversight filed the lawsuit on Tuesday after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg claimed he was added to a group chat where Trump officials discussed plans to target the Houthis.
“Signal is not an authorized system for preserving federal records and does not comply with recordkeeping requirements under the FRA or NARA guidance,” the filing says.
“Upon information and belief, under current State recordkeeping rules and practices, officials do not forward Signal messages, including messages from the Signal chat, to their official email accounts, thereby barring American Oversight and other FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requesters from obtaining responsive records to which they are otherwise entitled under FOIA, particularly if such Signal messages are set to auto-delete,” the lawsuit adds.
It further argues that “Defendants’ use of Signal, as demonstrated by this particular example, presents a substantial risk that they have used and continue to use Signal in other contexts, thereby creating records that are subject to the FRA and/or the FOIA, but are not being preserved as required by those statutes.”
“Defendants’ use of Signal, as demonstrated by this particular example, strongly suggests that they have used Signal to communicate about matters that may otherwise have been discussed via email, thereby avoiding creating records responsive to American Oversight’s FOIA requests for emails,” American Oversight argues in the lawsuit.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X that Goldberg’s “entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.” Her statement followed Goldberg dropping the phrase “war plans” for “attack plans.”
