Trump Goons’ Secret Signal Chats Exposed After Humiliating Scandal
Members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet discussed official business in more than a dozen Signal group chats, it has been revealed.
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Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by Democracy Forward and reviewed by The Atlantic revealed 13 previously unreported group chats on the encrypted messaging app Signal, featuring officials such as Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and JD Vance.
Some of the group chats were active in the weeks following the humiliating “Signalgate” scandal, when The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a group chat in which Hegseth openly discussed attacking Houthi rebels in Yemen with Trump administration and intelligence officials.
Others were also set to automatically delete messages after a specified period, raising the possibility that Trump administration officials violated federal laws requiring the preservation of government records and communications.
The officials kept using the app even after Trump suggested they stop in the wake of Signalgate.
“I think we learned: Maybe don’t use Signal, OK? If you want to know the truth. I would frankly tell these people not to use Signal,” Trump told The Atlantic in April 2025.
The information released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests included screenshots of Signal groups showing their members, as well as the names of the chats.
Tellingly, one of the Signal group chats is called “Iran/Ukraine Planning,” while another is labeled “State USAID.”
However, much of what was discussed in the chats, and when they were formed, has been redacted, leaving a lot of the remaining information without context, The Atlantic reported.
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Records from Rubio’s phone show he was part of a group chat with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine and Pete Hegseth that was set to automatically delete messages after eight hours. A spokesperson for Caine denied that the chairman used the chat to discuss classified information.
Another larger group chat with 17 members, including Hegseth, Vance, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, was set to delete its messages after one week, as was a third chat with a participant labeled “TB.”
Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, suggested that these three group chats containing disappearing messages represent a “likely violation” of federal record-preservation laws in a to the National Archives and Records Administration.
“Given that numerous agency heads are personally implicated in these likely FRA violations, your action to initiate an enforcement action is critical,” Perryman added.
It is unclear whether any of the other group chats had also enabled an auto-delete function before the screenshots were taken.
Another group chat featuring Rubio, his then-counselor Mike Needham, and then–special envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone was active as long ago as April 15, 2025, 10 days after Trump told The Atlantic he wished his administration had not used Signal.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly described the emergence of the Signal group chats as “old news,” telling The Atlantic: “As we have said, Signal is an approved app that is pre-loaded on government phones.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, State Department, and Pentagon for comment.
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