An AI chatbot was consulted about military action, raising questions about security risks, sycophancy and hallucination.

House Democrats are trying to force the White House to turn over President Donald Trump’s conversations with AI chatbots, including when he consulted Elon Musk’s Grok about deposing Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro at the start of the year.

In a joint letter to Trump last week, Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, and Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, argued that the president’s AI prompts — and the responses he received — should be considered public records under the 1978 Presidential Records Act. Lawmakers also raised ethical and security concerns about the president’s reliance on “unsecured, privately operated AI systems” to carry out foreign policy decisions, alleging that Trump consulted Grok, but not Congress, on military deployment to Venezuela.

According to public reporting cited in the letter, in December 2025, just weeks before ordering the military operation and Maduro’s arrest, Trump spent multiple hours prompting Grok about how Venezuelans would respond to the leader’s capture. Trump reportedly “came away thinking Grok was ingenious.”

Garcia and Raskin argue that Trump’s use of AI “exposes the country to malign influence from unknown and unaccountable third parties.” A January executive summary of a General Services Administration report, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, concluded that xAI’s Grok “does not meet the safety and alignment expectations required” for general federal use and may pose a security risk in classified settings.

Using Grok as an informal policy adviser also raises questions over Musk’s political influence over a system he owns and has repeatedly altered to reduce content filters.

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