Hegseth, Rubio and other government officials continued to use Signal app after embarrassing leak: report

Source: The Independent

Tuesday 30 June 2026 12:57 EDT


Senior Trump administration officials continued using Signal, a private messaging app, after last year’s embarrassing leak when a reporter was added to a group chat discussing sensitive military operations, according to a new report.

Last March, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he had been inadvertently added to a Signal chat with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, where they detailed U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. The incident sparked outrage, with critics calling it an example of “gross negligence” and saying the chat — which reportedly included self-deleting messages — likely violated records-preservation laws.

In the aftermath, Trump called for a change. “I think we learned: Maybe don’t use Signal, okay,” he told Goldberg in April. “If you want to know the truth. I would frankly tell these people not to use Signal.”

But newly released records, obtained by the group Democracy Forward under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the existence of 13 previously unreported Signal chats from the first half of 2025, some of which were used by senior officials after the leak, The Atlantic reported Monday.

Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/hegseth-rubio-signal-app-leak-b3005803.html