Two senior House Democrats are demanding that President Donald Trump preserve artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot conversations used for official White House business following reports that he consulted Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot about a potential U.S. military operation in Venezuela.
In an Oct. 28 letter to Trump, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said AI prompts and responses generated during official presidential duties must be preserved under the Presidential Records Act (PRA). The act requires preserving presidential records created or received in the course of official duties.
“This is not optional,” the lawmakers wrote. “AI prompts submitted by you and your staff, as well as the outputs you received, plainly fall within the definition of presidential records.”
The request follows reporting by TIME that Trump consulted Grok during a December 2025 Oval Office meeting with Musk, including asking how Venezuelans might respond to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. Trump subsequently ordered a military operation to capture Maduro in January 2026.
“We are writing to ask whether you have actually been soliciting advice from Elon Musk’s AI intelligence (AI) chatbot, Grok, in order to help you carry out your official duties as President of the United States,” Raskin and Garcia wrote.
The lawmakers questioned the use of commercial AI systems in presidential decision-making, particularly when those systems could process sensitive information or influence national security decisions.
They warned that relying on Grok for advice about military operations could introduce into foreign policy decision-making “a technology that is highly manipulable and demonstrably error-prone.”
“Second, the unsecured use of AI chatbots by you and your closest advisors exposes the United States to acute national security risks,” the lawmakers wrote.
They warned that presidential use of such systems “exposes the country to malign influence from unknown and unaccountable third parties.”
Raskin and Garcia want to know whether the Executive Office of the President (EOP) maintains records of chatbot interactions, including conversations conducted through commercial platforms that may operate outside White House records management systems.
Their request also covers AI vendor contracts, including whether providers can retain or access White House prompts and outputs and whether information submitted by EOP personnel can be used to train AI models.
The lawmakers are seeking details on restrictions against entering classified information into chatbots, policies governing non-enterprise AI platforms, and controls for logging, auditing, and monitoring employee interactions.
They also requested information on safeguards against data leakage, unauthorized access, and model-inversion attacks, along with any assessments by the EOP or National Archives and Records Administration of AI-related security risks and presidential records obligations.
Other questions concern third-party access to prompts, outputs, logs, and metadata; staff training; and any previous incidents involving improper disclosures, security risks, or failures to preserve official records.
The lawmakers also requested a closed-door briefing by 5 p.m. on Nov. 11 on the White House’s AI records retention policies, vendor contracts, cybersecurity safeguards, and controls governing access to sensitive government information.