Republican senators are warning that any conversation taking place between senior Trump administration officials over the commercial app, Signal, need to be preserved to determine whether classified information was compromised and to comply with the Federal Records Act.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) says he’s working on a letter with Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, instructing the Trump administration to preserve all the records related to a Signal chat among senior officials about a military strike on Houthi rebels.
“We’re working on a different letter on preservation of documents,” Wicker said.
A person familiar with the matter said that letter regarding document preservation was sent to the Trump administration Thursday.
Wicker and Reed sent another letter Wednesday to the Pentagon’s office of inspector general asking the Defense Department to provide a detailed assessment of the facts and circumstances surrounding the Signal chat that involved Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and other senior officials.
“This chat was alleged to have included classified information pertaining to sensitive military actions in Yemen,” they wrote. “If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know.”
They asked specifically for an assessment of whether any individuals transferred classified information, including operational details, from a classified system to an unclassified system.
The request by the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee for the Trump administration to preserve all documents related to the chat could lay the groundwork for further congressional investigation.
Wicker says his panel will hold a “classified briefing” on the matter but hasn’t said yet whether he would agree to a public hearing — something that some Democrats on his panel are already demanding.
“I’m on Armed Services … so I’d like to see the secretary of defense come before our committee and take some questions and explain why he decided to do this,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).
“I would like to understand his motivation. What does he understand about Signal? Can we get him some training? I think he should resign from the job because of this,’” he added.
Kelly, a decorated naval combat pilot, called the leakage of operational details on Signal “one of the biggest ‘OPSEC’ blunders,” he could think of, including during his 25 years in the Navy.
The biggest controversy over the Trump officials’ use of Signal is whether they compromised national security or even violated the Espionage Act by disclosing operational details of a military strike before it happened on a group chat that included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine.
But lawmakers are zeroing in on the question of whether senior Trump officials complied with federal record-keeping laws by discussing operational details of a military strike on a commercial app, which allows for messages to be automatically deleted after a period of time.
Compliance with the Federal Records Act was at the center of the controversy of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during the 2016 presidential election.
A State Department audit in 2016 found that Clinton failed to comply with the Federal Records Act because she did not turn over emails about State Department business before leaving government service.
The Federal Records Act was enacted in 1950 to ensure that vital records are preserved to provide the public with historical records of federal decision-making.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said it’s critical that the Trump administration complies with the federal record-keeping law.
“We have to,” he said. “We could always point to lapses in the Biden administration but I don’t want to race to that bottom. I want to hold us to a higher standard.”
Tillis applauded Wicker’s effort to investigate the scandal, which multiple Senate Republicans have called a major “mistake” and a “screw up.”
“I do agree with Sen. Wicker that we should examine it and let the facts speak for themselves. That makes sense,” he said.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), a member of the Senate Armed Services panel, said Trump’s national security team needs to “up their game.”
“Obviously they made a mistake. They got to up their game,” he said.
Sullivan, a former colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, said that operational security or OPSEC “is really important and they should fix it.”
The subject of records retention came up at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, two officials who were part of the Signal chat about the Yemen strike, both testified.
Ratcliffe told lawmakers that his agency has taken steps to preserve the records of official conversations.
“That came up actually in the Intelligence Committee hearing. John Ratcliffe brought it up, saying they’re using Signal in a way that’s also consistent with federal law where they got to be able to keep records on it,” said Sen. James Lankford (D-Okla.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Lankford noted that Signal has a function that allows messages to be automatically deleted after a short while.
“They do have to be able to keep that record for [recordkeeping] purposes,” he said.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to “promptly make best efforts” to preserve all communications over Signal related to the senior officials conversations about military planning.
James Boasberg, the judge for the U.S. district court for the District of Columbia, issued the ruling in response to a lawsuit by American Oversight, a group that advocates for government transparency.
The group argued that the discussion over Signal violated the Federal Records Act.
“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,” said Chima Chukwu, the group’s executive director said in a statement.
Boasberg, the chief judge for the D.C.’s district court, issued an order earlier this month halting two flights deporting Venezuelan migrants, including alleged gang members, to El Salvador.
The flights continued to their destination after a stopover in Honduras despite the ruling.
The U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday by a 2-1 vote upheld Boasberg’s order against the Trump administration invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport a group of Venezuelans without hearings.
