Judge says it's too late to order recovery of Trump officials' Signal messages

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Hill

06/20/25 6:22 PM ET


A federal judge said Friday it’s too late to order the recovery of already-deleted Signal messages from key members of President Trump’s Cabinet, largely rejecting a request from an oversight group to get involved.

But U.S. District Judge James Boasberg did order acting National Archivist and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to ask Attorney General Pam Bondi to take steps to preserve Signal chats across the government at risk of being deleted. “At this juncture, the Court largely denies American Oversight’s slew of requests and will instead grant only narrower relief,” the judge wrote.

American Oversight, a group that regularly files records lawsuits against the federal government, sued five top Trump officials following revelations that they discussed a military strike in a group chat on the encrypted messaging app — and unintentionally included a journalist.

They had asked the judge to order the officials to preserve all Signal communications and recover chats that had been deleted. However, Boasberg noted, American Oversight’s own “emphatically stated” representation to the court was that destroyed Signal messages cannot be recovered and to issue the directive would be fruitless.

Read more: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5361553-judge-says-its-too-late-to-order-recovery-of-trump-officials-signal-messages/

[kkmarie]

1. Federal Records Act

Yes, cabinet members and other government officials are generally required to retain communications that are considered federal records. This is mandated by the Federal Records Act and enforced by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA

https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/publications/documenting-your-public-service.html#:~:text=Are%20Electronic%20Messages%20Federal%20Records,or%20transmission%20of%20the%20record.

They were warned to retain the communications and they were warned not to delete the chats.

Another day in the Krasnov regime..... laws/rules, they don't freakin matter

[BumRushDaShow]

2. At my agency

we had MANDATORY annual "Records Management" training (along with annual "Security" and "Ethics" training)... and if we didn't take those, our login credentials were taken away.

[cstanleytech]

3. Hopefully, barring a pardon they will be held criminally liable once Trump's out of office.

[dlk]

4. Is there a communication recovery timeline/deadline in the law?

Sounds like this may be an activist judge merely making it up as he goes along, while putting his thumb on the scale..

[timms139]

5. They can most likely

get all the Signal chats from Iran they proably save them .