Democratic legislators in the United States Congress demanded that President Donald Trump preserve all conversations held with artificial intelligence tools —especially with Grok, the chatbot from xAI owned by Elon Musk— after it was revealed that the President had consulted that platform about the Venezuelan popular reaction to a potential capture of Nicolás Maduro, weeks before the military operation that apprehended him was carried out.
The letter was sent on October 28 and bears the signature of Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Robert Garcia, his counterpart on the Committee on Oversight and Reform.
According to reports cited in the document and gathered by TIME magazine, Trump spent "hours" consulting Grok during a private meeting with Musk in the Oval Office in December 2025.
In that session, the president reportedly asked the chatbot how Venezuelans would react if U.S. forces captured Maduro.
Grok would have responded that Maduro was a repressive leader and deeply unpopular, and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall.
Weeks later, on January 3, 2026, Trump ordered the so-called "Operation Absolute Resolution," which culminated in the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela by U.S. forces.
Democrats link both events, although there is no public evidence that the consultation with the chatbot directly influenced the military decision.
The letter invokes the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, which stipulates that documents generated during official presidential duties belong to the public and must be preserved.
Lawmakers pointed out, however, that this law does not explicitly mention artificial intelligence, which adds a layer of legal ambiguity to the claim.
In addition to Grok, the letter calls for preserving conversations with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity when they have been used in the exercise of presidential duties.
The political dimension of the issue is significant: Musk, owner of xAI and creator of Grok, maintained a close relationship with Trump during his second term and was appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, raising questions about whether the president consulted a chatbot linked to a political ally to guide a high-risk military operation.
The scrutiny regarding the use of artificial intelligence in operations is not new. In September 2026, a federal court decision revealed that the chatbot Claude, developed by Anthropic and deployed through Palantir, was part of the Pentagon's technological framework during the mission, although its exact function was not specified.
The legislators set a deadline for a closed-door briefing before 5:00 PM on November 11, 2026, during which they expect to receive details on the use of AI, record-keeping policies, and applied security measures.
The White House responded succinctly: "It preserves all records required by law."
Trump, for his part, had declared in January 2026 that the capture of Maduro had bipartisan support, although the Democratic Party never confirmed it formally, and that "no one had the courage to capture him before".
The dispute turns this demand into a discussion about updating the legal framework for governmental transparency in light of new technologies, at a time when the use of artificial intelligence in state decisions still lacks explicit regulation.
Related videos:
Filed under: