FOIAengine: Trump’s New Chief of Staff Is a Lightning Rod for FOIA Requests. Who’s Asking, and What Do They Want to Know?
Donald Trump was just kidding about making UFC boss Dana White his press secretary. He was serious about making Stephen Miller his chief of staff.
Days after voters handed Democrats control of both the House and Senate, Trump replaced Susie Wiles, who largely worked behind the scenes, with the man most closely identified with his deportation drive. If Democrats were expecting a president in the mood to make deals, the Miller appointment gave them an early answer.
Reporters and watchdog groups already have a list of questions. As Democrats prepare to investigate the administration, some of the questions they might ask are already sitting in federal agencies’ FOIA logs: What did the White House tell the State Department as deportation flights to El Salvador were being arranged and challenged in court? Did anyone in the White House weigh in before the FCC ordered eight ABC stations to apply for early license renewals? What involvement did Miller have in the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of Elon Musk’s nemesis, Media Matters?
Those are among the questions behind 22 Freedom of Information Act requests targeting the new White House chief of staff, logged by nine federal agencies and departments in FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows.
The requests were filed before Miller got the top job. FOIA requests to the federal government can be an important early warning of bad publicity, investigations or litigation to come, or uncertainties to be hedged and gamed out. In this case, the FOIA requests offer an early look at where the fights over Miller’s new role could break out next.
Miller’s predecessor, Wiles, drew FOIA questions, too, but the requests naming her generally cast a wider net. Most requests named Wiles alongside others on the Trump Administration roster, seeking to vacuum up communications about things like DOGE and Project 2025.
The Miller requests are more pointed. Eileen Guo of the MIT Technology Review sought Miller’s exchanges with Marco Rubio about the government’s closure of a State Department office that Rubio claimed “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans.” Jake Spring of the Washington Post wanted to probe Miller’s contacts with the Environmental Protection Agency about greenhouse-gas reporting. The Democracy Forward Foundation, a prolific FOIA requester with over 800 requests in FOIAengine, asked to see messages from the FTC’s leadership to Miller, apparently about the agency’s harassment of Media Matters.
All the requesters were looking for the same thing: How Miller’s White House influence steers agency decisions.
Trump promoted Miller on November 6, three days after voters handed Democrats control of both the House and Senate. The New York Times reported that Miller was undeterred by the election outcome, convening a call with national security officials the next day to press his immigration agenda. But one of the Times’ bylined reporters, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, was already using FOIA to get way out in front of his own story. A year earlier, Kanno-Youngs had gone looking for the paper trail, filing a comprehensive FOIA request with the State Department to trace the Trump Administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members on GlobalX flights to El Salvador, as well as its response to Federal Judge James Boasberg’s order blocking those removals.
The requests from left-leaning Democracy Forward (tagline: “We believe democracy is worth the fight”), a relative newcomer to the Washington advocacy scene, stand out for another reason. Founded in 2017, at the start of Trump’s first term, the foundation has built a sizable war chest in less than a decade, and its fundraising has taken off. The foundation reported $65.6 million in contributions for the year ended June 2025, nearly four times what it took in the year before, with $50.3 million in net assets. Who’s putting up the money is harder to pin down. The Chronicle of Philanthropy traced $29.4 million in grants – the largest from any donor – to Fidelity Charitable, a sponsor of donor-advised funds whose account holders can funnel money to charities without the charity revealing their identity.
Democracy Forward started filing public-records suits in Trump’s first year in office. It now accounts for more than 600 requests in FOIAengine’s database since 2021. According to Docket Alarm, the foundation is a named party in over 800 lawsuits, about half of which fall into the categories of administrative procedure or FOIA.
[INSERT A DOCKET ALARM GRAPHIC HERE]
In addition to asking about Miller’s possible involvement in the FTC’s harassment of Media Matters, Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward’s president and CEO, filed requests in May 2025 with the State Department, Customs and Border Patrol, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for records involving Miller, other administration figures, and America First Legal, the organization Miller helped found. Two months later, Democracy Forward sued DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce its related FOIA requests about Miller’s possible coordination with people associated with America First Legal and the use of masked or unidentified officers. That case is ongoing.
Perryman returned to the State Department on March 4, 2026, with a narrower FOIA list of State officials and a longer list of people outside the department. Her request sought communications between Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau or refugee bureau official Andrew Veprek and a roster that included Miller, border czar Tom Homan, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and officials at DHS, ICE and Justice. The filing identifies two State Department inboxes that could help reconstruct how the administration coordinated immigration and refugee policy.
Democracy Forward filed another FOIA request on March 18, 2026, apparently aimed at finding out who had the ear of the FTC’s top officials in the fight over the FTC’s demand for records from Media Matters. Perryman sought messages that FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson or his chief of staff, Gary Barnett, sent to Miller or White House technology adviser David Sacks – including texts, Signal and WhatsApp messages, and direct messages on X and Truth Social.
In that same March 18 request, Perryman also sought Ferguson’s calendars as well as emails with Mike Davis, the founder and president of the Article III Project, a group that backs conservative judicial nominees. Although the FTC’s summary of Perryman’s FOIA request didn’t name Media Matters, Davis and Miller had already figured in the court record surrounding the FTC’s contested investigation. The FTC ultimately dropped its investigative demand, and the case ended in May 2026. Democracy Forward’s request, filed two months earlier, could still illuminate how the investigation began.
The most recent FOIA filing about Miller was sent to the Federal Communications Commission. On August 11, the American Civil Liberties Union asked for the records behind the FCC’s decision to make eight Disney-owned ABC stations apply for early license renewals. It sought internal communications about Disney, ABC and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, and any FCC discussions of complaints from White House figures including Trump, then-chief of staff Susie Wiles and Miller.
The FCC has said it is investigating Disney and ABC for possible violations of its prohibition on unlawful discrimination. In the FCC proceeding, the ACLU argues that the investigation is in retaliation for Kimmel’s jokes about Trump. The FOIA request could help establish whether complaints reached the FCC from the White House, and how the agency handled them.
To see all the requests mentioned in this article, log in or sign up to become a FOIAengine user.
Next: The latest Freedom of Information requests to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
FOIAengine is the only source for the most comprehensive, fully searchable archive of FOIA requests across over 40 federal departments and agencies. FOIAengine has more robust functionality and searching capabilities and standardizes data from different agencies to make it easier to work with. Learn more about FOIAengine here. Sign up here to become a trial user of FOIAengine.
PoliScio now offers everyone free daily FOIAengine Email Alerts when a new FOIA request matches one of your personal keywords. Sign up here to create your account and identify your keywords.
FOIAengine access now is available for all professional members of Investigative Reporters and Editors, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of journalism. IRE is the world’s oldest and largest association of investigative journalists. PoliScio Analytics is proud to be partnering with IRE to provide this valuable content to investigative reporters worldwide.
John A. Jenkins, co-creator of FOIAengine, is a Washington journalist and publisher whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and elsewhere. He is a four-time recipient of the American Bar Association’s Gavel Award Certificate of Merit for his legal reporting and analysis. He is the author of The Partisan: The Life of William Rehnquist. His latest book is Summer of ’71: Five Months That Changed America, about the fateful year before Watergate. Click here to watch the official book trailer. Jenkins founded Law Street Media in 2013. Prior to that, he was President of CQ Press, the textbook and reference publishing enterprise of Congressional Quarterly. FOIAengine is a product of PoliScio Analytics (PoliScio.com), a new venture specializing in U.S. political and governmental research, co-founded by Jenkins and Washington lawyer Randy Miller. Learn more about FOIAengine here. To review FOIA requests mentioned in this article, subscribe to FOIAengine.
Write to John A. Jenkins at JAJ@PoliScio.com.