The legal escalation surrounding the Signal chat incident involving The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has now veered into political theater. What began as an admitted mistake—Goldberg being accidentally added to a non-classified messaging thread about anti-Houthi operations—has morphed into a lawsuit that appears more performative than substantive.
The lawsuit, filed by left-leaning watchdog group American Oversight, targets senior Trump administration officials including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Their claim? That these officials may have violated the Federal Records Act by failing to properly preserve messages related to government business on the Signal platform.
The allegation hinges not on whether classified information was disclosed—Trump officials have uniformly testified under oath that it wasn’t—but on whether the chat was archived in compliance with federal records retention rules. The problem? There is no public indication that retention protocols were violated. And without a formal FOIA denial or evidence that the messages were destroyed, the lawsuit rests on speculation.
JUST IN: Judge James Boasberg has been assigned to the Signalgate lawsuit. pic.twitter.com/nrLv9EQNyO
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 26, 2025
Signal, a widely used encrypted app, is approved for non-classified government use. The app’s presence on agency devices is not new, nor is its use inherently unlawful. The Federal Records Act requires preservation of official communications, but agencies often have internal procedures for doing so. Without knowing what steps were or weren’t taken behind the scenes, American Oversight’s suit appears to rely on the assumption that a breach occurred simply because the chat existed.
The speed with which this lawsuit was filed—before basic information requests could reasonably be processed—suggests a calculated effort to trigger headlines, not legal accountability. The group’s interim executive director, Chioma Chukwu, even declared the matter “potentially a crime,” despite lacking evidence that classified information was involved or that any statutory thresholds were met.
This aligns with a broader pattern emerging in Trump’s second term: legal activism through litigation. As traditional media avenues prove ineffective at slowing the administration’s momentum, political opponents increasingly turn to the courts to generate controversy and create bureaucratic burdens. Even if the case is dismissed or yields no legal penalty, it still serves as a weaponized distraction.
CIA Director Ratcliffe, one of the officials named, has already gone on record affirming that no classified material was exchanged and that Signal’s use was authorized and routine. The administration has acknowledged the Goldberg addition was a mistake but confirmed that operational security was never compromised.
In short, the central narrative—suggesting national security secrets were recklessly exposed—is no longer viable. What remains is a lawsuit built on procedural guesswork, aimed at turning an administrative error into a political scandal.
