Automattic has asked the court to reject WP Engine’s motion for sanctions, arguing that WP Engine has not shown that any case-relevant messages were lost or that Automattic failed to preserve them.
In its August 11, 31-page opposition, Automattic points to its preservation efforts, collection of Mullenweg’s messaging data, and his testimony that he had not enabled disappearing messages for communications related to WP Engine or the litigation.
Automattic says the record does not show that relevant messages were lost
Automattic says it issued a litigation hold in October 2024 and later reminded custodians specifically to preserve material from ephemeral-messaging applications including Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. It retained Level Legal to conduct collection and review, ultimately collecting more than six terabytes of data, reviewing more than 1.5 million documents and producing more than 225,000 documents by the close of fact discovery. Level Legal also forensically imaged five of Mullenweg’s personal devices in April 2025.
Automattic’s central argument is that WP Engine has not identified any specific message that was allegedly lost. The filing says WP Engine “cannot identify one, not a message, not a conversation, not a counterparty” to support its claim that relevant communications disappeared. Automattic says WP Engine therefore has not shown that a responsive message existed in the first place, much less that one was lost.
The filing also addresses a September 21, 2024 X post in which Mullenweg asked people sending him information from inside companies to contact him through “Signal with disappearing messages.” Automattic says Mullenweg testified that his Signal settings prevented people from finding his account through directory searches or his phone number and that he does not recall receiving a message in response to the post.
The dispute also centers on the initial imaging of Mullenweg’s iPhone. Automattic says the April 2025 extraction could not capture the Apple Keychain file needed to decrypt WhatsApp and Signal because the phone was running iOS 18.4, which “was not yet fully supported by the Cellebrite imaging software.”
The recently unredacted WP Engine filing addresses the same issue, pointing to the May 2026 declaration from Jonathan Robins, an employee of Automattic’s e-discovery vendor. WP Engine says Robins’ declaration confirmed that the first forensic imaging of Mullenweg’s personal devices did not take place until April 17, 2025, nine months after it says the preservation obligation arose. It also points to his account that the iPhone’s newly released iOS version prevented the April imaging from producing a full-file-system image, leaving the data needed to retrieve Signal and WhatsApp unavailable.
WP Engine further argued that the problem was not fully addressed until the March 16, 2026 reimaging. They also point to Mullenweg’s deposition testimony that, when asked why it took almost a year to reimage his phone, he said, “I don’t know,” and likewise said he did not know how many disappearing messages he had received during the 11-month gap.
Automattic’s filing also references an October 2, 2025 Zoom call with Mullenweg, during which Level Legal and his counsel asked him to search his WhatsApp and Signal applications using 16 terms, including “WP Engine,” “WPEngine,” “WPE,” “wordpress.org,” “migration,” “ACF,” “SCF,” and “trademark.” Level Legal captured the resulting hits by screenshot and documented the applications’ disappearing-message settings, which showed the feature was off.
Level Legal later obtained a full-file-system image of the iPhone on March 16, 2026. It says the extraction contained Telegram messages dating to January 2012, WhatsApp messages to November 2015 and Signal messages to October 2019, with all three sets extending through March 2026. Automattic says every Signal and WhatsApp communication captured during the October Zoom search was also found in the later image, processed and loaded for review. The April 9 production included one responsive Signal message, while no responsive WhatsApp messages were identified through a reasonable search.
The filing also addresses Mullenweg’s misplaced Pixel Fold and MacBook, which were referenced by WP Engine in the recent unredacted filing. WP Engine had argued that the devices could not remedy what it characterized as the failed April 2025 iPhone imaging. Automattic responds that the messaging applications synchronized across devices, citing Mullenweg’s testimony that “the exact same messages would be on the iPhone, the Pixel, the MacBook.” It says WP Engine has not identified any message, account or data type unique to either misplaced device. Automattic also says that an ephemeral message that had already disappeared would not have been transferred to a synced or later device.
Automattic also disputes WP Engine’s suggestion that disappearing messages were used for case-related communications. Mullenweg testified that he had never enabled ephemeral messaging on Signal, WhatsApp or Telegram for communications concerning WP Engine or the case and had “not knowingly deleted” relevant communications. According to the filing, the only disappearing messages identified in the record involved “highly sensitive personal communications with romantic partners.”
They also address a dispute over Mullenweg’s responses to requests for admission. Automattic says the responses WP Engine relies on were unchanged from those served on December 1, 2025, five months before Mullenweg’s declaration and deposition, and that WP Engine did not ask him about those responses during his deposition.
Automattic argues that these circumstances do not establish that relevant messages were lost, much less that they were lost because of inadequate preservation. It also says WP Engine has not shown prejudice, pointing to the extensive discovery preserved from Slack, email, P2 and other sources.
A day after filing the motion, Automattic’s Chief Legal Officer Andy Missan addressed the dispute in an August 12 blog post titled “Wrong Again,” calling WP Engine’s motion “a desperate attempt to get sanctions and other extreme remedies.” He reiterated Automattic’s position that the ephemeral messaging involved personal communications with romantic partners and said WP Engine “cannot identify a single missing message about anything having to do with this case.”
A hearing on the motion is scheduled for September 30, 2026, before Magistrate Judge Ajay S. Krishnan.