SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
transparency
Watchdog: Sure Looks Like Trump Uses App That Auto-Deletes Messages to Chat With World Leaders
"President Trump has repeatedly made clear his contempt for laws governing presidential transparency and proper recordkeeping."
Jan 27, 2026
A watchdog group is raising concerns that President Donald Trump may have violated federal recordkeeping laws by using an auto-deleting message application to text world leaders.
On Tuesday, the group American Oversight sent a letter to White House Counsel David Warrington asking for information about whether the president is taking all the required steps to comply with the Presidential Records Act, which requires the preservation of all presidential records—including digital correspondence—during official duties.
The group highlighted two posts Trump made on Truth Social last Tuesday in which appeared to reveal that he was using Signal or another similar messaging app to discuss world affairs with world leaders.
The first screenshot shows a message from French President Emmanuel Macron, who discussed plans to meet with Trump about his proposal to take over Greenland and meetings with other foreign diplomats.
The second was sent from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who told Trump he'd use his "media engagements" in Davos to "highlight" Trump's work in Ukraine and Gaza, and expressed an interest in "finding a way forward on Greenland."
While some European diplomats found it troubling that any intimate communication they have with Trump could be exposed to the world on a whim, American Oversight said it also raised concerns about the preservation of records.
Trump has a long history of flouting rules surrounding the proper storage of documents. The group pointed out that during his first term, the president would often rip up notes, memos, and documents after reading them and at least twice reportedly attempted to flush them down the toilet.
More recently, he was indicted for improperly stashing away classified documents at his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House and showing them to people without security clearances.
The second Trump White House has already been involved in a scandal surrounding their use of deleting message apps when a journalist was accidentally invited into a private Signal chat last year, which contained the administration's plans for an imminent strike on Yemen. The messages in that chat were reportedly set to delete after one week, before later being changed to four, which would have also violated the Presidential Records Act.
“President Trump has repeatedly made clear his contempt for laws governing presidential transparency and proper recordkeeping,” said American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu. “The Presidential Records Act exists to ensure transparency of presidential decisions and safeguard the historical record for the American people."
"Given President Trump’s well-documented history of mishandling sensitive information and presidential records," he added, "the White House must assure the public that these communications are secure and being preserved and protected in full compliance with the law.”
The group has requested that the White House counsel disclose any other messages Trump may have sent using auto-deleting apps and ensure that any messages sent through mobile messaging programs are properly preserved.
Keep ReadingShow Less
83% of Americans Want Trump Admin to End Secrecy Behind Lethal, Extrajudicial Boat Strikes
Nearly seven in 10 feel the Trump administration has not provided evidence to justify its killing of at least 114 people in the Caribbean and other international waters.
Jan 07, 2026
The vast majority of US voters want the Trump administration to be more transparent about its campaign of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and other international waters, according to a new poll out Monday.
While it has faded from the headlines over the past week due to President Donald Trump's illegal overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and atdtempt to commandeer the nation's oil, his bombings of alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and elsewhere have continued into the new year.
As of January 2, the US military had disclosed 35 separate attacks to the public, with a death toll of at least 114 people in total since September. But the administration has provided scant evidence to justify the attacks.
According to an ACLU/YouGov poll released on Monday, which was conducted in late December, 83% of voters believed the administration must release its legal justifications and full, unedited videos of the lethal strikes. This includes 97% of Democrats, but also 82% of independents and 70% of Republicans.
Several media outlets reported in November that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) authored a still-classified legal opinion justifying the strikes and exempting those involved in directing them from future prosecution. The ACLU and other rights groups filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last month for the document.
The poll shows that a majority of voters—87% of Democrats, 53% of independents, and 15% of Republicans—disapproved of the strikes, while nearly seven in 10 felt that the administration has not yet shown evidence to the public justifying the bombings.
Members of both parties in Congress have called for the administration to release video of the strikes, with particular scrutiny on the September 2 "double-tap" strike in which the military bombed two shipwrecked survivors of an earlier attack.
Last month, Hegseth declined a request from Congress to release unedited video footage of the incident to the public. He had previously changed his recounting of the event multiple times, initially boasting of the attack before shunting the blame onto an underling—Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley—when the second strike was made public and met with outcry.
Trump, meanwhile, has misled the public about what drugs were supposedly on the boats. He has publicly stated that the ships were carrying fentanyl, a drug that has caused hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths in the US, dubbing it a "weapon of mass destruction."
Lawmakers have said they were briefed that the ships were actually carrying cocaine, which is much less deadly, though evidence of this has also not been shown to the public.
One bombed-out ship that washed up on the shores of Colombia in late December with two mangled corpses aboard was found to have only been carrying marijuana, which is legal in more than half of all US states. Other investigations have found that some of those killed in the strikes were fishermen or others not connected to the drug trade.
While the September 2 strikes—which were reportedly given the go-ahead by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—have become the subject of a congressional inquiry, the ACLU says the entire bombing campaign is illegal.
"The US military may not, under any circumstances, execute civilians who are merely suspected of smuggling drugs," the group said last month. "Rather, the US government must first pursue non-lethal measures like arrest and demonstrate that lethal force is an absolute last resort to protect against a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury."
Two-thirds of respondents to the poll said that rather than carry out extrajudicial executions, they would prefer that the Coast Guard conduct its usual operations, seizing those it suspects of transporting drugs and putting them on trial.
Meanwhile, 58% said they'd support Congress holding a public hearing with officials in charge of the strikes, such as Hegseth, while just 19% said they'd oppose it.
Just over half described killing people suspected of carrying drugs as "murder," with that belief growing even stronger with respect to the double-tap strike.
"Our polling makes clear that an overwhelming number of Americans on both sides of the aisle want Congress to step up and hold the Trump administration publicly accountable for its illegal strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean,” said Christopher Anders, director of ACLU’s democracy and technology division.
“This means open hearings with the officials responsible for these murders, as well as releasing both the legal justification and unedited videos of the strikes," he continued. "Given the life-or-death stakes of the president’s use of force, it’s imperative that this transparency and accountability comes immediately.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Cover-Up Feared as Epstein Files Law Lets DOJ Redact Info Sensitive to ‘National Security’
"Not national security that has anything to do with the national defense or harm to the nation," said independent journalist Ken Klippenstein. "But the self-serving kind that protects the system from the people."
Nov 20, 2025
After its near-unanimous approval in Congress and following months of sustained public pressure, President Donald Trump signed a law on Wednesday releasing the files from the FBI's investigation into the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The law is called the "Epstein Files Transparency Act," but critics fear that a key provision could allow the US Department of Justice to keep critical information from coming to light.
The law requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to "make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" related to the investigations into Epstein and his partner and coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell within the next 30 days.
But critically, it gives Bondi expansive power to redact large amounts of information, potentially burying material that may be incriminating to the president, whose relationship with the disgraced financier has become the subject of greater speculation with each new set of documents released.
One provision allows Bondi to redact documents to strike information that "would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution." Last week, Trump ordered Bondi to open investigations into Epstein's connections with several prominent Democrats: Among them are former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.
Lawmakers have raised fears that these investigations were enacted to give Bondi greater leeway to scrub information from the record. On Monday, Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), the law's Republican cosponsor, warned that the DOJ "may be trying to use those investigations as a predicate for not releasing the files."
But another largely overlooked section may give her even more sweeping authority. The law states that information may also be redacted "if the attorney general makes a determination that covered information may not be declassified and made available in a manner that protects the national security of the United States, including methods or sources related to national security." It also allows her to redact information deemed "to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy."
While the law requires Bondi to issue a written justification for each piece of redacted information and also clarifies that no file shall be "withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary," it does not define the criteria Bondi must use to determine whether something is in the interest of America's "national security," "national defense," or "foreign policy."
"One glaring loophole will prevent full transparency: It’s called national security," wrote independent journalist Ken Klippenstein Monday, as the House moved toward a vote on the files. "Not national security that has anything to do with the national defense or harm to the nation, but the self-serving kind that protects the system from the people by depriving them of information."
There are many cases in recent memory of the US using national security as a justification to withhold information from the public. Earlier this year, the Trump administration used its "state secrets" privilege to deny a judge's request to turn over information related to its extrajudicial deportation flights to El Salvador, arguing that it would compromise its diplomatic relations with that country. Meanwhile, past administrations have used national security to justify keeping the public in the dark about everything from the military's use of torture to the government's mass surveillance of American citizens.
While the primary interest in Epstein surrounds his alleged role in facilitating a sex trafficking ring for the political and economic elite, there are clear cases where the government could attempt to use national security as a justification to keep information hidden.
For example, recent documents have revealed the extent of his involvement with foreign intelligence and dealmaking. Drop Site News has reported extensively on Epstein's long history working as an informal fixer for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to secure deals with several foreign nations that benefited Israel and attempted to shape global politics, including in the United States, to its interests.
Klippenstein has also raised concerns about the inclusion of the word "unclassified" in the bill, which he noted "is an official word that in theory only exists when it comes to national security matters; that is, that the release of such information could cause 'harm' to national security."
He said he asked Massie and the law's Democratic cosponsor, Ro Khanna (Calif.), for comment on why that word was included at all since the law does not relate to national security. Neither responded.
But Massie told journalist Michael Tracey back in September that a similar provision to redact info related to “national defense” was included because, "You have to put that in there if you’re going to get them to sign it."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who fought against the release of the files until the bitter end but ultimately voted for the bill along with all but one member of the House, invoked what he called "national security concerns" in a last-ditch effort to stop the discharge petition that brought the Epstein bill to the House floor.
It echoed what Bondi herself said back in March when asked on Fox News why any information besides victims' names would need to be stricken from the record: "Of course, national security."
"If large sections of the files remain redacted or withheld, the public may face a truncated version of 'transparency,' one that protects many of the powerful rather than exposes them," wrote independent journalist Brian Allen. "This is not just a story about Epstein. It is a stress test of our system of accountability."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular