The farce awakens
A popular fake social media persona from the days of the first Trump administration is back for round two
Back in January 2017, when Donald Trump began his first U.S. presidential term, dozens of accounts purportedly belonging to rogue employees of various federal agencies sprung up on Twitter (now known as X). While some of these accounts (often collectively referred to as “AltGov”) appear to have had actual connections to the government, others were decidedly less legitimate.
One prominent dubious account was “Rogue POTUS Staff” (@RoguePOTUSStaff), an alleged group of White House insiders allegedly leaking inside information to a Twitter audience that, at its peak, exceeded 800,000 followers. The information provided by the account frequently turned out to be wildly inaccurate, however, and some of the account operator’s behaviors were and are at odds with the notion that it is or ever was run by someone leaking information from inside the White House at great personal risk. The account went largely silent following the inauguration of Joe Biden in January 2021, but began posting again in 2025 following Trump’s return to office, on both the original X/Twitter account and on a Bluesky account created in 2024.
Throughout the first Trump administration, the @RoguePOTUSStaff account regularly tweeted alleged White House gossip and inside information on upcoming administration decisions. It didn’t take long for the account’s alleged “leaks” to start being proven drastically wrong, however. On the morning of February 13th, 2017, “Rogue POTUS Staff” authoritatively announced that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn was “not going anywhere”; that same evening, Flynn resigned. Similarly, the rumors peddled by the account that Robert Mueller was preparing to indict Jared Kushner and Donald Trump, Jr. turned out to have no basis in reality, and a “broad self pardoning document” that Donald Trump, Sr. allegedly granted himself at the end of his term somehow failed to materialize in any of the federal cases against Trump.
In a bizarre bit of security theater, the operator of the @RoguePOTUSStaff account posted a “security check” on their associated website back in 2017, which consisted of the text “Account Status: Secure” and several rambling paragraphs, and linked to it from their Twitter account. Presumably, the idea was that if the Twitter account were “compromised”, the “security check” message could be updated with some sort of warning. This sort of “security check” is of little value, however, if the operator puts up a new version of the site that lacks the “security check” page; in this scenario (which is exactly what happened), there’s no way for a reader to differentiate between a takeover and a simple website update based on the “security check” alone.
In July 2018, the operator of the “Rogue POTUS Staff” account and website self-published a $3 eBook titled “Being Rogue: Resistance in the chaotic Trump White House”. This decision is extremely bizarre for alleged White House leakers, as selling online requires disclosing substantially more personal and financial information than simply creating social media accounts and websites, and if the account were legitimate, would put whoever was behind it at greater risk of being unmasked by the authorities. This additional risk would be unnecessary as far as releasing information to the general public goes, since the “Rogue POTUS Staff” X/Twitter account had (and still has) several hundred thousand followers, far more than would be likely to ever read the eBook. (Interestingly, the eBook vanished from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble at some point over the last year; it is presently unclear whether the removal was voluntary on the part of the author.)
This is far from the only action by “Rogue POTUS Staff” that is at odds with the idea of the account being run by a secret White House leaker or leakers; others include an attempt to prove authenticity by posting a stock photo of a door, and threats to sue me for talking about the “Rogue POTUS Staff” Twitter account and website.
The @RoguePOTUSStaff X/Twitter account ceased posting for the duration of the Biden administration, but over on Bluesky, a new “Rogue POTUS Staff” account was created on November 11th, 2024, not long after Trump was elected to a second term in office. This account was originally created as @roguepotusstaff.bsky.social, and then quickly used Bluesky’s domain verification feature to change the handle to @potusstaff.com. This is the same domain name used by the original “Rogue POTUS Staff” website (which still contained material from 2017/2018 in late 2024), connecting the new Bluesky account to the original 2017 “Rogue POTUS Staff”. The handle was reverted to @roguepotusstaff.bsky.social the next day, but was again changed to @potusstaff.com in late March 2025, which is also when the Bluesky account began posting. The X/Twitter version of @RoguePOTUSStaff resumed posting at the same time.
Thus far, the operator of the “Rogue POTUS Staff” accounts and website has been somewhat more restrained in making claims of White House access this time around, particularly on Bluesky. False information has already begun creeping in here and there, however, such as an incorrect assertion on X/Twitter that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was about to be fired. Interestingly, all the old articles have been purged from the “Rogue POTUS Staff” website, and replaced with a short story with the title “Inauguration’s Eve”. Several files from the original version of the site remain online, however, such as the 29931 byte, 491 by 114 pixel JPEG image of the White House used as a header, and the visual style is unchanged from the 2017/2018 version of the site, suggesting (but not proving) that the change in content is an update by the original owner rather than a new entity attempting to portray the same fake persona.
thanks for doing this fact check and sharing it! you rock.