Marco Rubio’s Disappearing Signal Chat
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, like most federal officials, is legally required to retain records that he creates as part of his job. So it was no surprise that his office ended up in court last year after The Atlantic revealed that he had participated in an auto-deleting Signal chat about war plans in Yemen with other top national-security officials.
Reported by 1 outlet — The Atlantic. See all sources ↓
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, like most federal officials, is legally required to retain records that he creates as part of his job. So it was no surprise that his office ended up in court last year after The Atlantic revealed that he had participated in an auto-deleting Signal chat about war plans in Yemen with other top national-security officials. In a case involving a Freedom of Information Act request for the Signal records on Rubio’s phone, a federal judge wanted assurances that these documents had been preserved.Rubio’s team told the court that his government phone was equipped on July 21, 2025, with software called LeapXpert that automatically preserved from Signal “all messages sent or received, regardless of whether the sender configures a message to ‘auto-delete.’” Seven weeks later, in another declaration to the court, the State Department went further. “Secretary Rubio does not use the auto-deletion functions in third party messaging applications when sending communications that may include federal records,” Susan Weetman, a senior adviser for the department’s Information Access Programs Directorate, told the court on September 9.But that denial, written in the present tense, was less than it seemed.
Read the full report at The Atlantic ↗
Why it matters
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- What's the story?
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio, like most federal officials, is legally required to retain records that he creates as part of his job. So it was no surprise that his office ended up in court last year after The Atlantic revealed that he had participated in an auto-deleting Signal chat about war plans in Yemen with other top national-security officials.
- How widely is it covered?
- 1 outlet, average source rating 8.0/10.
- When was it last updated?
- 7m ago.
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Marco Rubio’s Disappearing Signal Chat
Sources1TypeCoverageThe Atlantic