The Trump administration does not appear inclined to impose sanctions on those involved in the so-called “Signal Gate” scandal, nor to open an official investigation into the matter. However, federal judge James Boasberg has ordered the White House to preserve all messages exchanged in the now-infamous Signal group chat, where several top members of Trump’s cabinet coordinated a military operation against the Houthis in Yemen using this commercial, non-encrypted messaging app — mistakenly including a journalist, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. The Atlantic’s scoop prompted furious reactions against Goldberg from Trump and his security advisor Mike Walz, and the scorn of political opponents accusing the administration of gross incompetence.
The temporary restraining order issued by Boasberg, the chief U.S. district judge in Washington, compelled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to save their messages exchanged between March 11 and 15.
Boasberg clarified that his order aimed to ensure that no messages from the Signal chat were lost — since the group was set to automatically delete messages after a certain period — and not because he had determined that the Trump administration had committed any wrongdoing.
The so-called “Signal Gate” scandal has shaken the national security establishment and raised concerns among freedom of information groups that the chat communications could be lost. Hegseth’s messages included a summary of operational details described as a “team update,” containing information about the takeoff times of F-18 fighter jets, the expected timing for the first bomb drops, and the launch of naval Tomahawk missiles.
Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser and the person responsible — as he admitted — for mistakenly including Goldberg in the chat, shared a real-time update (“first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed”), potentially revealing U.S. capabilities and assets in the region.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the information shared by Waltz came from an Israeli intelligence source, and Israeli officials reportedly complained privately to the U.S. about the public disclosure of Waltz’s messages.
The lawsuit before Boasberg was filed by the nonprofit transparency group American Oversight, which accused the officials in the Signal chat of violating the Federal Records Act, a law requiring government officials to preserve official communications. Boasberg is set to decide at a later stage whether setting the Signal chat’s disappearing message function violated federal records retention laws. American Oversight argued that the chat conversation amounted to policy deliberations that should have been archived.
This week, the White House ordered Elon Musk’s DOGE, the “Department of Government Efficiency,” to preserve all communications sent via the Signal app as part of a new “records retention policy.” This information emerged from a court filing in an unrelated case but appears to be a direct response to the Signal Gate scandal.
Meanwhile, there is outrage among U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots, both current and former. According to a New York Times report, the focus of the criticism is Defense Secretary Hegseth, who has been accused of sharing precise timing and details of the raids via an unsecured chat less than three hours before the attacks. Pilots have called this a severe violation of operational security (OPSEC) and fear the disclosure put their colleagues’ lives at risk. “The Houthis have acquired various types of Iranian-made surface-to-air missiles designed to hit fighter jets even at high altitudes,” said Fabian Hinz, a military analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
There are also doubts about Donald Trump’s insistence that the mission against the Houthis was a resounding success. According to analysts from the British magazine The Economist, the operation yielded few results while increasing the risk of regional escalation. The rebels, who control much of Yemen and the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, continue to launch missiles against Israel and target shipping traffic in the Red Sea. According to The Economist, U.S. attacks allow extremists to present themselves as defenders of believers against “infidels,” while Trump’s approach — now directly threatening Iran — risks exacerbating the conflict. This has prompted the Houthis to threaten attacks on cities and oil terminals in the Gulf, opening the door to a conflict that could extend far beyond the Red Sea.
