Overview
- The State Department produced screenshots Tuesday that Democracy Forward obtained under FOIA revealing 13 previously undisclosed Signal group chats from the first half of 2025.
- Some groups were set to auto‑delete messages on short timers, including an eight‑hour setting and a one‑week setting, and the screenshots name senior officials such as Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Dan Caine and JD Vance.
- The chats continued in the wake of last March’s leak in which Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a group that discussed airstrikes and after President Trump publicly advised officials to stop using Signal.
- A federal judge ordered efforts to recover at‑risk Signal records last year and administration lawyers later told the court they had installed preservation tools like LeapXpert to capture messages from government phones.
- Democracy Forward has urged the National Archives to open an enforcement action over likely violations of the Federal Records Act and the disclosures are likely to prolong litigation and congressional oversight over recordkeeping and security.