White House to DOGE employees: Preserve your Signal records

Politico

27-03-2025

The White House, reeling from the revelation that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared sensitive military attack plans with colleagues on a private messaging app, sent some new instructions this week to DOGE staffers: Preserve your Signal messages.
The 'records retention policy' was adopted for the Department of Government Efficiency on Monday, just as the Signal scandal was unfolding. It was revealed in a lawsuit challenging the DOGE initiative's recordkeeping practices.
The new policy emphasizes that messages sent on personal devices and on Signal must be preserved, and that the app's auto-delete feature should be disabled.
'If you happen to receive work-related messages on your personal device — whether via text, Signal, a personal email address, or otherwise — make sure to capture and transmit those messages to your work device (such as by screenshotting and forwarding),' the
one-page policy
reads.
It's unclear if the policy was adopted directly as a result of the Signal crisis that has enveloped the White House since the Atlantic revealed Hegseth and other senior administration officials discussed sensitive details of an attack on Houthis based in Yemen two hours before that attack was carried out. The message chain, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz,
inadvertently included The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg
, who revealed the apparent breach on Monday.
DOGE, the White House-based office led by Elon Musk that has embedded allies across federal agencies, has been facing pressure on multiple legal fronts to publicly reveal details of its operations. A federal judge
recently ordered DOGE
to comply with public records demands that typically apply to agencies outside the White House, despite DOGE's claim to be immune from such requests.
The Trump administration revealed the new records retention policy in
a lawsuit brought by American Oversight
in February, which cited news reports suggesting that many DOGE staffers were conducting business via Signal and may already have destroyed records. American Oversight is suing the administration separately over
the texts revealed
by The Atlantic, suggesting the auto-delete function — which appeared to be activated by Waltz — violates federal recordkeeping laws. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is
slated to hold a hearing
in that case Thursday afternoon.
Justice Department attorneys say there's no reason to believe DOGE staffers deleted any messages and say they're being preserved — like other White House documents — in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.
'[DOGE] systematically complies with its Presidential Records Act obligations and regularly instructs its employees to preserve presidential records in all forms, including as recently as two days ago,' the administration argued, citing the new retention policy.
The policy begins by encouraging DOGE employees to avoid these issues altogether.
'Remember — the easiest way to comply with these obligations is to use work devices for all work-related activities,' reads the document, which is unsigned.