debut: 2/16/17
38,880 runs
Judge orders signal chat record to be preserved.
Waltz appears to change the settings so messages will automatically disappear after one week. In theory, this is something that is considered best practice to keep private information secure from prying eyes — but in this case, it raises federal record-keeping concerns. Under the Presidential Records Act, conversations of this nature must be memorialized in accordance with US law. It remains unclear if any official record of this conversation exists. Later in the conversation, Waltz extends the timer to four weeks.American Oversight, the nonprofit advocacy group that brought the records-preservation lawsuit, said Thursday’s ruling “marks an important step toward accountability.” The group had asked in the lawsuit for the federal courts to force Trump administration officials to do better record-keeping.A day after the revelation, a watchdog group filed a lawsuit accusing the Cabinet officials on the chat of violating federal records law. Sources told CNN that the details shared in the group message by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were classified, though the Trump administration has denied it.
“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,” the group’s interim executive director, Chioma Chukwu, said in a statement.The judge focused Thursday’s 20-minute court hearing on “finding common ground” between the Trump administration and American Oversight so that he could issue a temporary restraining order to which both sides would be amenable.
During Thursday’s hearing, Boasberg also slyly referenced a major dispute in the deportation case, around whether the administration was obligated to follow an order he issued verbally from the bench before he put it in writing. As he told the DOJ lawyer what he was ordering in the records preservation case, Boasberg said, with a grin, “Don’t worry, it will be in writing.”
Waltz appears to change the settings so messages will automatically disappear after one week. In theory, this is something that is considered best practice to keep private information secure from prying eyes — but in this case, it raises federal record-keeping concerns. Under the Presidential Records Act, conversations of this nature must be memorialized in accordance with US law. It remains unclear if any official record of this conversation exists. Later in the conversation, Waltz extends the timer to four weeks.American Oversight, the nonprofit advocacy group that brought the records-preservation lawsuit, said Thursday’s ruling “marks an important step toward accountability.” The group had asked in the lawsuit for the federal courts to force Trump administration officials to do better record-keeping.A day after the revelation, a watchdog group filed a lawsuit accusing the Cabinet officials on the chat of violating federal records law. Sources told CNN that the details shared in the group message by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were classified, though the Trump administration has denied it.
“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,” the group’s interim executive director, Chioma Chukwu, said in a statement.The judge focused Thursday’s 20-minute court hearing on “finding common ground” between the Trump administration and American Oversight so that he could issue a temporary restraining order to which both sides would be amenable.
During Thursday’s hearing, Boasberg also slyly referenced a major dispute in the deportation case, around whether the administration was obligated to follow an order he issued verbally from the bench before he put it in writing. As he told the DOJ lawyer what he was ordering in the records preservation case, Boasberg said, with a grin, “Don’t worry, it will be in writing.”
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