Judge James Boasberg, COME ON DOWN. Again.
The chief judge of the US District Court for DC is already robe-deep in bullshit in the case of the Venezuelans kidnapped and shipped to El Salvador. At the moment, he’s dealing with a preposterous invocation of the state secrets privilege to fend off a query into potential contempt court. How dare the former head of the FISA court ask questions about an event which was filmed, tweeted, and retweeted by multiple members of the federal government!
And now Judge Boasberg’s been saddled with yet another potential stink bomb, as the Signalgate case landed on his docket this morning.
On Monday, The Atlantic‘s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg recounted the odd tale of being added to a group chat on the encrypted messaging platform Signal wherein 18 cabinet members and high-ranking Trump administration officials discussed and planned an upcoming drone strike in Yemen that killed Houthi leaders (as well as many civilians). Signal is the preferred communication app for journalists, thanks to its customizable auto-delete feature and lack of backup in the cloud. Essentially, there is no method of preserving those messages outside of screenshots — a gross violation of federal record keeping laws.
Users can select their default user settings to erase all messages, including on the recipient’s phone, after a specific period of time, so it’s impossible to know who in the chain was preserving those messages. But during the conversation, NSA Waltz, who originally set a one-week auto-delete deadline, switched it to four-weeks.
Extremely clean OP-SEC! The cleanest!
Since Monday, we’ve been through multiple news cycles, including: Secretary of Defense Hegseth denying the story after the White House had confirmed it; National Security Advisor Michael Waltz suggesting that Goldberg hacked the group chat; CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard insisting under oath that no classified information was discussed; The Atlantic publishing screenshots of the entire exchange (while redacting the name of an agent), to prove that operational details — which are clearly national defense information — were discussed on an app which can only be loaded onto personal devices; and Gabbard and Ratcliffe testifying that the government pre-installed Signal on officials’ phones.
The president, who swept to office in 2017 by stoking outrage over Hillary Clinton’s supposedly scandalous failure to safeguard classified emails, is purportedly pissed. Not because of the spectacular fuck-up, of course, but because NSA Waltz had Goldberg’s number in his phone and may have been in contact with the “deceitful and highly discredited so-called ‘journalist’ who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,” as Hegseth put it.
The episode has now spawned its first lawsuit, with American Oversight filing a complaint in federal court in DC this morning. The nonprofit watchdog group sued Ratcliffe, Hegseth, Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Secretary Scott Bessent, and the National Archives (NARA) under the Federal Records Act (FRA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), “to prevent the unlawful destruction of federal records and to compel Defendants to fulfill their legal obligations to preserve and recover federal records created through unauthorized use of Signal for sensitive national security decision-making.” The case also names Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his capacity as Acting Archivist, since Trump fired the head of NARA as part of his government-wide purge.
American Oversight had already filed multiple FOIA requests prior to the scandal, and it claims a cognizable fear 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.”
And indeed the chat logs released today strongly imply that the administration is regularly conducting high-level deliberations on Signal.
The plaintiff seeks declaratory relief that Signal messages constitute an agency record which must be preserved and an order to the attorney general that she must initiate enforcement and recovery proceedings.
The DOJ has not yet responded as of this writing. Presumably they will try to get the case dismissed on standing. Barring that, they’ll claim that the messages are both unclassified and a state secret. Then they’ll summon another troll storm against Chief Judge Boasberg and demand his impeachment.
HOW VERY DARE YOU, SIR!
American Oversight v. Hegseth [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
The post Pour One Out For Judge Boasberg. He Got The Signalgate Case. appeared first on Above the Law.
Judge James Boasberg, COME ON DOWN. Again.
The chief judge of the US District Court for DC is already robe-deep in bullshit in the case of the Venezuelans kidnapped and shipped to El Salvador. At the moment, he’s dealing with a preposterous invocation of the state secrets privilege to fend off a query into potential contempt court. How dare the former head of the FISA court ask questions about an event which was filmed, tweeted, and retweeted by multiple members of the federal government!
And now Judge Boasberg’s been saddled with yet another potential stink bomb, as the Signalgate case landed on his docket this morning.
On Monday, The Atlantic‘s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg recounted the odd tale of being added to a group chat on the encrypted messaging platform Signal wherein 18 cabinet members and high-ranking Trump administration officials discussed and planned an upcoming drone strike in Yemen that killed Houthi leaders (as well as many civilians). Signal is the preferred communication app for journalists, thanks to its customizable auto-delete feature and lack of backup in the cloud. Essentially, there is no method of preserving those messages outside of screenshots — a gross violation of federal record keeping laws.
Users can select their default user settings to erase all messages, including on the recipient’s phone, after a specific period of time, so it’s impossible to know who in the chain was preserving those messages. But during the conversation, NSA Waltz, who originally set a one-week auto-delete deadline, switched it to four-weeks.
Extremely clean OP-SEC! The cleanest!
Since Monday, we’ve been through multiple news cycles, including: Secretary of Defense Hegseth denying the story after the White House had confirmed it; National Security Advisor Michael Waltz suggesting that Goldberg hacked the group chat; CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard insisting under oath that no classified information was discussed; The Atlantic publishing screenshots of the entire exchange (while redacting the name of an agent), to prove that operational details — which are clearly national defense information — were discussed on an app which can only be loaded onto personal devices; and Gabbard and Ratcliffe testifying that the government pre-installed Signal on officials’ phones.
The president, who swept to office in 2017 by stoking outrage over Hillary Clinton’s supposedly scandalous failure to safeguard classified emails, is purportedly pissed. Not because of the spectacular fuck-up, of course, but because NSA Waltz had Goldberg’s number in his phone and may have been in contact with the “deceitful and highly discredited so-called ‘journalist’ who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,” as Hegseth put it.
The episode has now spawned its first lawsuit, with American Oversight filing a complaint in federal court in DC this morning. The nonprofit watchdog group sued Ratcliffe, Hegseth, Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Secretary Scott Bessent, and the National Archives (NARA) under the Federal Records Act (FRA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), “to prevent the unlawful destruction of federal records and to compel Defendants to fulfill their legal obligations to preserve and recover federal records created through unauthorized use of Signal for sensitive national security decision-making.” The case also names Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his capacity as Acting Archivist, since Trump fired the head of NARA as part of his government-wide purge.
American Oversight had already filed multiple FOIA requests prior to the scandal, and it claims a cognizable fear 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.”
And indeed the chat logs released today strongly imply that the administration is regularly conducting high-level deliberations on Signal.
The plaintiff seeks declaratory relief that Signal messages constitute an agency record which must be preserved and an order to the attorney general that she must initiate enforcement and recovery proceedings.
The DOJ has not yet responded as of this writing. Presumably they will try to get the case dismissed on standing. Barring that, they’ll claim that the messages are both unclassified and a state secret. Then they’ll summon another troll storm against Chief Judge Boasberg and demand his impeachment.
HOW VERY DARE YOU, SIR!
American Oversight v. Hegseth [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
