Categories: Intelligence

Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Memos on Creating Presidential Daily Briefs for Donald Trump

Background

The President’s Daily Brief (PDB), sometimes referred to as the President’s Daily Briefing or the President’s Daily Bulletin, is a top-secret document produced and given each morning to the President of the United States, and is also distributed to a small number of top-level US officials who are approved by the President, and includes highly classified intelligence analysis, information about CIA covert operations and reports from the most sensitive US sources or those shared by allied intelligence agencies. The PDB is also provided to the President-elect of the United States, between election day and inauguration.

In September of 2017, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) seeking the following:

“…any new or updated guidelines or for any/all memos regarding the preparation and formatting and creation of the President’s Daily Brief.  Please note that I limit this request to records during Calendar Year 2016 and 2017.”

Continue scrolling for more...

On March 16, 2018, they sent out the responsive documents.

The records show that their instructions are heavily classified and exempted from release. You can see from the records below, that much of the information is redacted, however, there are some instructions and notes that made it through, and it is very telling how the PDB’s are created for President Donald Trump.

For example, use lots of pictures:

And, “one(ish)” has become a proper page count directive:

And finally, use the least amount of acronyms possible:

Declassified Documents

 Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Memos on Creating Presidential Daily Briefs for Donald Trump [20 Pages, 2.4MB]

The above release contained quite a bit of “non-responsive” material, which they consider not responsive to my request, so they do not review it for release. I then filed a second FOIA request specifically for the “non-responsive” material previously unreviewed. The below is the result. In large part, they denied it all again, just citing various other FOIA exemptions.

 Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Memos on Creating Presidential Daily Briefs for Donald Trump [26 Pages, 5MB]

Follow The Black Vault on Social Media:

This post was published on October 16, 2020 9:00 am

John Greenewald

Recent Posts

FOIA Appeal Adds New Dog Bite Details from Biden White House, Confirms Video Evidence Withheld

Newly obtained Secret Service records continue to shed light on the numerous biting incidents involving…

September 26, 2025

DoD Redacts Nearly All Records Explaining AARO’s Use of Law Enforcement Exemption for UAP Files

The Department of Defense (DoD) has released a set of heavily redacted emails in response…

September 25, 2025

Pentagon Denies Existence of “Yankee Blue” Memo Reported by Wall Street Journal

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) response has raised new questions about a widely circulated…

September 16, 2025

DoD Says Aerospace Firms Went “On the Record” About UAP — Then Refuses to Acknowledge Records Exist

In March 2024, the Department of Defense (DoD) published publicly its Report on the Historical…

September 6, 2025

NASA Cites FOIA Exemption to Withhold James Webb Briefing Content Despite Public Hearing

In September 2024, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was filed with NASA seeking…

September 3, 2025

FBI Files: Historical Figures & Groups

Background Welcome to the FBI Files on Historical Figures & Groups archive at The Black…

August 31, 2025