President Donald Trump’s least-favorite judge will preside over a lawsuit alleging his aides violated federal records law when they used Signal to discuss a military strike.
District Court Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg was assigned the lawsuit Wednesday, a day after a government watchdog filed the suit over Trump officials’ use of the messaging application.
Among the defendants named in the lawsuit are Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“The Federal Records Act requires federal officials to preserve communications related to official government business,” the nonprofit American Oversight wrote in the lawsuit, obtained by the Daily Beast.
The lawsuit mentions Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic journalist who was mistakenly added to the group and broke the news of its existence, but the lawsuit is not focused on that apparent security breach.
Instead, the watchdog American Oversight says it hopes to “prevent the unlawful destruction of federal records and to compel [Trump officials] to fulfill their legal obligations to preserve and recover federal records created through unauthorized use of Signal for sensitive national security decision-making.”
The group may have scored an early victory in landing Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, as its presiding judge. He has contested the Trump administration’s sudden deportations to El Salvador this month and has stood by his rulings despite relentless intimidation from MAGA, including a dreaded name drop by Elon Musk.
Gabbard defended her use of Signal by claiming the group chat contained no classified information. Hegseth made a similar argument, asserting “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
American Oversight argues that such talks—especially on Signal, an encrypted app that allows for the automatic deleting of messages after a set period of time—must still be properly archived, as the topic was a U.S. military strike.
Goldberg said National Security Adviser Mike Waltz’s Signal account added him to the group chat out of the blue. Waltz suggested on Fox News that The Atlantic editor may have acted nefariously to get his number in Waltz’s phone, but the Trump adviser ultimately conceded he takes “full responsibility” for the gaffe.
Waltz added Wednesday night that the Trump administration will not use Signal moving forward.
