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A federal judge on Friday ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as a proxy archivist, to collect signal messages belonging to Trump officials who could be at risk of deletion and to introduce them to the Department of Justice for further review.
Judge James Boasberg said his hands were tied beyond that and he couldn’t do anything about the signaling messages that had already been deleted.
Boasberg’s order comes in response to a watchdog group suing five Donald Trump’s cabinet members, including Rubio, after the Atlantic released a story revealing their signalling chat debating an imminent plan to launch an airstrike on Yemen’s Houtsis.
Boasberg, who has become one of Trump’s top judiciary webs due to a ruling in an unrelated immigration case, said court records show that five Trump officials have “failed to perform their duties so far” under the federal record law.
Judge orders to save signal messages in crosshairs of Trump’s deportation case
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced a new policy surrounding visas. (Anna Money Maker/Getty Images)
The judge said the US Surveillance, the left-leaning watchdog that filed the lawsuit, has created a strong case where Cabinet officials can use signal, an encrypted messaging app, to communicate for work purposes and automatically unlock messages, creating a strong case that is likely to be permanently lost.
However, in the context of the federal records law, Boasberg states that he has the option of requiring him to request that he request that Rubio asks him to ask Attorney General Pam Bondi to ensure compliance with the laws of existing signaling messages at risk of deletion.
Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American surveillance, stated in a statement that while the group’s lawsuit has now ended, it is “fully prepared” to sue again if it turns out that the Trump administration failed to comply with Boabsberg’s orders.
The judge tells the government’s watchdog fired by Trump that there’s not much she can do for them
“It was never necessary to force court intervention to perform their fundamental legal duties on acting archivists and heads of other agencies.
The explosive signal incident involved Rubio, who communicated about the attack plan in a chat group after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses, CIA director John Ratcliffe, director of National Intelligence Director Tarsi Gabbard, and then national security advisor Mike Waltz, who happened to add Atlantic journalists to the chat group.
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The Trump administration denied fraud and claimed that communications were not “categorized.” Bondi dodged questions at a press conference on the investigation into the case, instead doubled the White House’s claim. This means that chats are simply “sensitive” and not “classified.”
Pentagon inspectors began investigating the incident in April at a bipartisan request from the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Ashley Oliver is a reporter for Fox News Digital and Fox Business, covering the Department of Justice and legal affairs. Email story tips to Ashley.oliver@fox.com.
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