Newscenter Media News A US judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to preserve messages sent on the Signal messaging app discussing attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen that became public after they were inadvertently shared with a journalist.
The order from US District Judge, James Boasberg requires federal agencies whose leaders participated in the chat, which included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, to maintain all messages sent through Signal from March 11 until March 15, the period during which an editor for The Atlantic magazine documented activity in the chat.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for the Trump administration earlier said federal agencies were already working to determine what records still existed so they could be preserved.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday said that Boasberg should not be on the Signal case and other cases involving the Trump administration, describing him as among several federal judges trying to obstruct Donald Trump’s agenda.
“He cannot be objective. He’s made that crystal clear,” Bondi said during an interview on Fox News.
Trump had previously called for Boasberg’s impeachment after the Washington-based judge temporarily blocked the administration from deporting some Venezuelan migrants.
An appeals court on Wednesday upheld that ruling.
Federal agencies involved in the Signal chat were sued on Tuesday by American Oversight, a government accountability group.
According to the group, the use of the application, which allows for messages to be automatically deleted after a certain time span, violated a federal record-keeping law.
“We are grateful for the judge’s bench ruling to halt any further destruction of these critical records. The public has a right to know how decisions about war and national security are made — and accountability doesn’t disappear just because a message was set to auto-delete,” Chioma Chukwu, American Oversight’s interim executive director, said in a statement.
At the time of filing this report, the White House has not given any comment on the development.
Judge orders Trump’s administration to preserve Yemen attack plan messages