Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg revealed in The Atlantic that senior Trump administration officials accidentally included him in a group chat on Signal, where messages can be set to disappear after a given timeframe.
According to Goldberg, Trump national security adviser Michael Waltz set some of the messages to disappear after one week. Others were set to disappear after four weeks.
The move suggests that Waltz and other group members have been communicating via Signal to keep their conversations secret, violating federal law which requires text messages about official government acts to be preserved.
Under the records laws applicable to the White House and federal agencies, all government employees are prohibited from using electronic-messaging applications such as Signal for official business, unless those messages are promptly forwarded or copied to an official government account… Intentional violations of these requirements are a basis for disciplinary action. Additionally, agencies such as the Department of Defense restrict electronic messaging containing classified information to classified government networks and/or networks with government-approved encrypted features.
Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration
Because the contents of the “Houthis PC small group” chat included confidential information, including identities of intelligence agents, the officials may have also broken laws around sharing national security secrets.
The chat included Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff on policy / Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller, Ukraine / Middle East negotiator Steve Witkoff, and more.
