“The story about US attorney Lindsey Halligan’s use of Signal is deeply troubling. That she used the app apparently to discuss government business with a reporter, and configured her messages to disappear after eight hours, raises serious concerns that she is actively violating the Federal Records Act and the justice department’s own records-retention rules,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, a non-profit that frequently files lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain federal records. The group submitted a public records request for Halligan’s Signal messages on Thursday.

“Even if portions of the conversation might contain information not typically subject to immediate public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, federal law still requires that such records be preserved for specified periods. Setting such communications to automatically delete is not only inconsistent with those obligations but patently unlawful,” she said. “If Halligan failed to ensure these Signal messages were preserved, her actions may have violated federal law and warrant investigation or corrective action by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Acting Archivist Marco Rubio.”