Former officials in President Donald Trump's administration have been caught by the court deleting messages and potentially relevant evidence despite ongoing court cases and an order to retain documents.
Daily Beast correspondent Tom Latchem noticed the filing that popped up on Sept. 11, showing that at least two former Homeland Security officials deleted information.
Former Secretary Kristi Noem's top staffer, Karen Evans, served as "one of the ousted Department of Homeland Security chief’s most trusted aides," the report claimed. After she was told to retain information, including Signal chats, she "intentionally destroyed" those messages.
Judge Susan Illston wrote in a court filing that Evans, a former acting Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) leader, acted with “intent to deprive” plaintiffs of the information requested in the case.
"Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e)(2), plaintiffs are therefore entitled to a presumption that the information lost was unfavorable to defendants," the judge said.
"Evans should have known better," the judge blasted. "She previously served as Chief Information Officer at DHS, in charge of the agency’s records preservation policies. At a hearing on this litigation, her personal attorney touted that 'she is more so an expert” on Signal “than anybody else here[.]'"
Evans created the Signal chat that would likely have been "highly relevant" to the case, but she set her messages to auto-delete in four weeks, according to a message in the chat.
"On March 11, 2026, after she had been named as a defendant in this case and with plaintiffs’ emergency motion pending, Evans shortened the auto-delete timer on one of her FEMA Signal chats. And it wasn’t until April 25, 2026, that Evans created a back-up of her Signal messages, by which point the most timely messages were long since deleted," the judge explained.
She wasn't the only one. Joseph Guy, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deputy chief of staff also didn't produce any Signal messages from his phone, the judge said, despite having at least 26 FEMA-related Signal chats on his personal phone.
"While he was under a Court order to search his personal phone for relevant Signal messages, Guy — without consulting anyone, apparently — reinstalled the Signal app, thereby wiping all of his Signal message content. The day before he wiped his Signal app, Guy was supposed to have filed a declaration with the Court about preserving his records. But he missed the deadline. When he filed his declaration — literally a day late and metaphorically a dollar short—he said that none of his relevant Signal chats had been preserved," the judge wrote.
Guy claimed after the fact that he thought someone else was preserving the documents. The judge didn't buy it.
This "makes little sense and does not salvage his actions," she wrote.
Kara Voorhies, the senior advisor to the DHS secretary on FEMA issues, turned over a considerable amount of information indicating that both Guy and Evans were communicating on Signal.
"Evans created the FEMA 2.0 at the start of the relevant time period to this case, invited two of the stakeholders (Guy and Voorhies) who appear most critical to the FEMA claims in this lawsuit, and then set the Signal chat to auto-delete after four weeks. Accordingly, the Court concludes plaintiffs have shown by a preponderance of the evidence that FEMA 2.0 Signal chat messages were deleted and that those messages would have been relevant to plaintiffs’ claims," the judge said
Despite finding “that evidence demonstrates, at worst, negligence or perhaps gross negligence,” the judge refused to issue sanctions or any consequences for Guy or Evans. She even goes on to cite specific examples saying in at least one case, "here, the conduct goes beyond gross negligence."
