Watchdog Urges Preservation of Records Related to Halligan’s Signal Chat
Published by The Lawfare Institute
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A government watchdog group on Thursday urged Trump administration officials to preserve and recover records related to a top federal prosecutor’s use of an encrypted messaging application.
The preservation request follows reporting by Lawfare, which published screenshots of a Signal exchange between Senior Editor Anna Bower and Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan reached out to Bower after the reporter shared a post commenting on reporting about the criminal case Halligan is pursuing against New York Attorney General Letitia James. The messages were sent using Signal’s “disappearing messages” function, set to delete messages eight hours after being read.
In a letter sent this week to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Acting Archivist of the United States Marco Rubio, the group American Oversight said Halligan’s use of Signal “provides substantial reason to believe that federal records have been unlawfully removed or destroyed, or are at risk thereof.”
According to the letter, Halligan’s messages appear to concern her official duties as a prosecutor and could qualify as “federal records” under the Federal Records Act, which requires the preservation of communications related to government business. The group urged officials to take “immediate action to prevent further destruction and initiate an action to recover any records that were unlawfully removed.”
“No one can go ‘off the record’ to avoid following the law, not even someone acting as a powerful interim U.S. Attorney. That Halligan used Signal to discuss government business and configured her messages to automatically delete raises serious concerns that she is actively violating the law and attempting to hide the record of her actions — including that she may have revealed sensitive grand jury information,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight.
Halligan, a former personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, was appointed interim U.S. attorney earlier this year and has drawn scrutiny for her role in prosecuting the president’s perceived political enemies, including the prosecution of James. James is set to be arraigned today in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia.
Read the letter from American Oversight here or below:
