Democratic leaders on the House Oversight and Reform Committee are launching their own investigation into the use of the Signal communications app by high-ranking Trump administration officials and are putting those officials on notice to preserve a long list of records that may be requested as part of the committee’s work.
That notice came on March 25 from Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, D-Fla., chairman of the Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee.
It follows reporting – the gist of which has been largely confirmed by the Trump administration – that officials used the Signal app to discuss imminent plans to attack Houthis in Yemen, and inadvertently admitted an editor from The Atlantic onto the communications thread.
The House Democrats’ letter – addressed to officials including Vice President JD Vance, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio – claims that the report shows that the participants “disclosed highly sensitive, classified material over an unauthorized instant messaging network, compromising the national security of the United States.”
Reps. Connolly and Frost directed the officials to preserve records related to what they called the “catastrophic and confounding security breach” caused by the Signal conversation.
“This incident raises grave concerns about the misuse of unsecured communication platforms for classified discussions and the potential that American military and intelligence professionals may have been compromised by the reckless dissemination of such classified material,” the congressmen said.
“Accordingly, this letter serves as a formal request that you, your agents, employees, agencies, and representatives preserve and not alter, delete, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any and all documents, communications, materials, and electronically stored information (ESI) that may be relevant to this matter,” they said.
“We demand that you immediately suspend any automatic or routine document destruction policies, including email deletion protocols, shredding schedules, data overwriting processes, or automatic message deletion that may result in the loss of potentially relevant information,” the congressmen said.
“This preservation obligation extends to all documents, communications, and ESI in your possession, custody, or control, including but not limited to” emails, text messages and instant messages, electronic documents, social media posting, server logs, and backups and archived data, they said.
In a separate letter sent on March 25 to several of the same officials, Rep. Connolly along with Reps. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., Steven Lynch, D-Mass., and Robert Garcia, D-Calif., demanded “an immediate briefing on how and why America’s national security secrets ended up in a group chat on an unauthorized messaging app that included a journalist.”