Lawyers for Donald Trump’s administration have resisted telling U.S. District Judge James Boasberg about deportation flights to El Salvador that he blocked, citing “state secrets.”
Now, government lawyers defending the administration over so-called Signalgate will have to answer to the same judge in another case involving sensitive information.
Boasberg, in a court battle with the administration over the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants, was assigned a new lawsuit Wednesday in Washington, D.C. regarding the leak of bomb plans in a group chat.
The suit alleges senior officials in the Trump administration violated federal record-keeping laws when they used a group chat on commercial messaging service Signal to discuss imminent military operations in Yemen, inadvertently adding a journalist to the discussion.
The suit lists Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the National Archives and Records Administration as defendants.
It was filed by nonpartisan watchdog American Overwatch.
“This action arises from Defendants’ failure to meet their obligations under the Federal Records Act regarding messages from a group-chat discussion of planned and active military operations from March 11, 2025, through March 15, 2025, on the messaging application Signal, which can be set up to automatically delete messages,” the suit states.
American Overwatch added in a statement that the lawsuit “seeks to prevent further unlawful destruction of federal records and to compel the recovery of any records created through their unauthorized use of Signal.”
The legal action comes two days after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, first published an article in which he revealed that he was made privy to classified information by being invited into the chat by accident.
Earlier on Wednesday The Atlantic published the messages seen by Goldberg as part of the chat in full, after the Trump administration branded the story “another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
Boasberg confirmed to Politico through a spokesperson that the new lawsuit concerning the breach of national security had been assigned to him randomly through the court’s typical process.
There are currently 20 judges serving on the federal district court bench in Washington.
Elsewhere on Wednesday a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. rejected Trump’s attempt to throw out a lower-court ruling — made by Boasberg — that blocked the administration from deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport the immigrants for only the fourth time in U.S. history.
Flights carrying multiple people detained under the act were on their way to El Salvador on March 15 when Boasberg ordered the administration to turn the planes around, and passed an order temporarily halting further deportation flights. Three planes, however, landed and the immigrants were imprisoned.
Administration lawyers later refused to answer a number of questions from Boasberg about the flights, citing “state secrets.”
A subsequent filing from administration attorneys instructed Boasberg to “be more respectful.” He later responded in a ruling calling the attorneys “intemperate and disrespectful,” noting he had never before been subjected to such an attitude by government lawyers in his court.
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