When President Donald Trump inadvertently published a direct message to Attorney General Pam Bondi as a public post on his social media site, Truth Social, it showed he was continuing his first-term habit of conducting official business on social media.

This prompted me to send Freedom of Information Act requests to all cabinet officials with active Truth Social accounts for copies of their DMs, including restored copies of all deleted messages. This request included messages to or from the president, as well as any other administration official.

I expected to receive documents in response, both because I knew the president was using Truth Social to conduct business, and because federal records management rules make it inescapably clear that records that are sent to, or received by, agency officials on their social media sites are considered federal records that must be preserved and searched in response to FOIA requests.

A recent response to one of my FOIAs raises concerns that agencies are not complying with these rules.

One of the officials whose DMs I requested was Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who posts regularly on the site.

Because Noem’s account is as active as Bondi’s, I was expecting the agency to locate at least some records in response to my request.

Today, however, DHS told me that it had conducted a “comprehensive review” for the records I asked for and couldn’t find any.

I am unconvinced, to say the least. Here are my most immediate questions:

  • Has Noem, who has over 2 million followers and whose Truth Social posts regularly receive thousands of likes and hundreds of comments, never sent or received a direct message on the platform? It’s possible, perhaps, but not likely.
  • Does Trump only message Bondi on Truth Social, and none of his other officials? Maybe, but this would beg the question of why Bondi would be an outlier.
  • Was DHS confused about the wording of my request, which specifically asked for a complete archive of Noem’s DMs, or where to look for responsive records? If so, then it should have asked me to clarify rather than saying it had no records outright.
  • Finally, does Truth Social allow for preserving, archiving, or exporting DMs? If part of the issue is that it does not, then no agency official, much less the president, should have an account there, since that doesn’t allow officials to comply with federal or presidential records management rules.

Whether DHS genuinely found no records or simply failed to conduct an adequate search to avoid potentially providing any of Trump’s messages to officials, its response raises more questions than it answers. We are appealing the DHS denial to get to the bottom of it.