Rubio Turned On Disappearing Signal Messages Despite Court Declaration He Does Not Use Auto-Delete
A State Department adviser told a federal court on September 9 that Secretary of State Marco Rubio "does not use the auto-deletion functions in third party messaging applications when sending communications that may include federal records," in a declaration filed by Susan Weetman amid Freedom of Information Act litigation over Rubio's Signal records
Weetman's sworn September declaration that Rubio avoids auto-deletion sits uneasily against his subsequent activation of disappearing messages on a Signal chat with senior officials, reopening spoliation exposure in the Democracy Forward FOIA litigation regardless of whether LeapXpert captured the deleted content. The department's April 30 filing quietly dropped the "does not use" language rather than correcting it, inviting judicial scrutiny of whether the original declaration was accurate when made, and the redacted eight-hour auto-delete chat among Rubio, Hegseth, and Caine gives litigants a concrete comparison point beyond Rubio's own account. The Atlantic is the sole primary source, with Raw Story amplifying rather than independently confirming, leaving the episode single-sourced. The shift may instead reflect routine security hygiene rather than evasion, consistent with eliminating records already archived elsewhere, and the case tests whether server-side capture tools satisfy preservation duties assigned to the eMessaging platform rather than Signal itself.