Mike Johnston's administration acknowledges auto-deleting Signal messages on another internal group, Aurora mayor says Denver mayor "not being transparent"
A spokesperson for Denver Mayor Mike Johnston admitted this week that the office has been operating an internal group on the encrypted messaging app Signal that was monitoring news stories and had been auto-deleting the group's messages, apparently for more than a year. It's a strategy some experts say violates the spirit of Colorado's open records law.
The group, called "Media Monitoring," would link to news stories, according to mayoral spokesperson Jordan Fuja, and share those stories with personnel in the Mayor's office. But any comments or conversations about those stories were automatically deleted on the Signal app according to Fuja. She said the "media monitoring" Signal group started in the fall of 2023 and stopped auto-deleting its messages -- in January 2025 -- more than a year after the group chat began. Fuja was the administrator of the group but did not answer why the 17 member group was deleting its messages for more than a year, or why the practice was halted in January.
"This group chat is used to make sure the mayor's office can keep track of the news in real time, which is a critical function of running the city," said Fuja.
This is the second group in the Denver mayor's office that's been found to be utilizing the encrypted Signal messaging app and auto deleting their messages. Open records advocates say deleting such conversations violates the intention of Colorado's Open Records laws. Steven Zansberg, a Denver attorney specializing in First Amendment and open records laws says automatically deleting conversations between public officials.
"Seems like a pretty plain, straightforward, deliberate effort to evade transparency," said Zansberg.
"It's unlawful and it's breaking the law and it deprives us of the rights we have as Coloradans to observe the conduct of public business," said Zansberg.
CBS News Colorado previously reported Johnston's office started a different Signal group in January of this year called "Strike Force," to discuss Denver's immigration issues. That group was auto-deleting their conversations for about two weeks before they disabled the auto-delete function. They have not said why they changed the setting or why the group was initially deleting its communications.
The use of such messaging apps by government officials has been controversial and viewed as a way to avoid public disclosure of government decision making. In Michigan, after state police leaders were found in 2021 to be using Signal on state-issued phones, state lawmakers outlawed the use of encrypted messaging on state phones.
The Johnston administration has repeatedly said it does not believe its habit of auto-deleting Signal conversations was a violation of state open records law or of city data retention policies.
On Wednesday, after several weeks of asking to speak to Johnston about the Signal controversy, CBS News approached him following a public event. Asked about his administration's transparency, Johnston said, "We feel great. We're deeply committed to it."
He said his administration was "entirely transparent ... Always have been."
A reporter pointed out to Johnston that the media and public could not obtain records of Signal conversations if they had been automatically deleted and no longer existed.
"Anything that's CORA'd (Colorado Open Records Act) we'll obviously overturn and we think that's totally transparent," said Johnston.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman disagrees.
"He (Johnston) might go down as one of the least transparent officials in the history of the state," said Coffman.
He said Aurora began requesting open records from Denver months ago related to the immigrant crisis and how immigrants who arrived in Denver ended up being housed in Aurora. To date, Aurora says it has spent more than $9,000 on Denver's records but still does not have everything that's been requested. The City of Aurora has put Denver on notice that if all of Aurora's open records requests are not filled by next Wednesday, Aurora will file a lawsuit against Denver.
"This is an administration not just not transparent," said Coffman, "but dedicated to not being transparent."
Although some government agencies have stopped using Signal and its auto-deletion feature after concerns were raised about open records laws, the Johnston administration has not indicated any intent of moving away from the encrypted messaging app.
Coffman, who said he and his administration do not use the Signal app for city communications, said, "I think it does undermine the public trust."
