Two senior House Democrats asked President Donald Trump to preserve the prompts and answers from AI chatbots used in official White House work as presidential records, and to brief Congress by Nov. 11 on how those tools are secured, Nextgov/FCW reported Thursday. The request carries no legal force, but its questions about retention, vendor access and classified data apply to any organization that has put chatbots in employees' hands.
What Happened
Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Robert Garcia of California, the ranking members of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees, sent the letter dated Oct. 28. They argue that prompts the president, his staff or advisers in the Executive Office of the President submit to chatbots such as Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, along with the answers, fall under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which makes records of a president's official duties public property. "This is not optional," they wrote.
The letter cites Oct. 1 reports by TechCrunch and Time that Trump spent hours using xAI's Grok during a December 2025 Oval Office meeting with Elon Musk, including on how Venezuelans would react to the fall of Nicolás Maduro, whom U.S. forces captured weeks later, according to the letter. Politico first obtained the letter, AFP reported.
The lawmakers asked for a closed-door briefing covering retention policies for AI material, all contracts with chatbot vendors, including whether models may be trained on staff inputs, and rules on putting classified information into chatbots. They also ask how staff use is monitored, how prompts are protected from leaks, whether vendors or subcontractors can reach prompts, outputs, logs or metadata, and whether any past incidents raised record-keeping or security concerns.
The letter also points to reporting that a U.S. military intelligence report relied on a chatbot that misidentified a Chinese ship's cargo, and that overreliance on AI contributed to a U.S. strike on an Iranian school. AFP noted that neither episode shows Grok played a role in those military decisions.
A White House official told Nextgov/FCW: "The White House preserves all required records in accordance with the law."
Why It Matters
Every prompt an employee types into a chatbot is both a record and a potential leak. Who can see it, how long the vendor keeps it and whether it trains future models are contract questions that boards and agency heads should be able to answer, and this letter lays them out in one list.
Context
The Primary Wire reported in September that the White House launched America.gov, a public chatbot built on Google's Gemini and xAI's Grok. Raskin also joined a separate request this week asking five AI developers to report incidents in which their models acted against their makers' intent, which The Primary Wire reported Wednesday.
What to Watch
As ranking members, Raskin and Garcia lead their committees' minority and cannot compel a response. Watch whether the White House provides the briefing by Nov. 11. Nextgov/FCW noted the request could signal what lies ahead if Democrats win the House in next week's election.
