About 30 employees at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen and the American Consulate in Nuuk have been ordered to hand over all documents and written communications they had over a period of roughly three months concerning Donald Trump and his ambition to acquire Greenland.
The order comes from the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., citing that the material is needed to respond to a Freedom of Information request.
This is revealed in a series of internal emails obtained by Politiken.
Employees have been instructed to hand over both classified and unclassified material as well as information exchanged in private emails and text messages, including posts on social media and other written records.
Both Danish and American experts are puzzled by the scope of the request and the speed and extreme willingness with which the FOIA request has been processed. The employees received the order on June 13 this year and were given a week to upload the material.
The emails obtained by Politiken do not disclose who made the FOIA request.
Regardless of who it is, the request comes at a time when the atmosphere at the embassy and the consulate is reportedly tense, with many employees highly anxious that President Donald Trump and his inner circle are hunting for officials they see as disloyal.
»I’ve never experienced anything like this«, says a person closely involved in the matter, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Unprecedented
There may be good reason for the anxiety, says David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington. When the government receives such FOIA requests, it usually makes strenuous efforts to invoke legal grounds to deny them, citing national security or foreign policy, he explains.
»I’ve worked with and studied FOIA requests for decades, and I’ve never heard of anything like this«, he writes in an email to Politiken.
David Super notes that it cannot be ruled out that this is a genuine request from, say, a news outlet, but he suspects the government may use the information in its ongoing hunt for officials whom the MAGA movement sees as opponents.
He believes the most likely explanation is that the government is looking to »purge career diplomats who are skeptical of its rogue policies – which, of course, is precisely what an honest official should be, as they have sworn loyalty to the Constitution and U.S. laws, not to the sitting president«, he writes in his email to Politiken.
In this way, the FOIA request might be used in the government’s larger project, David Super assesses.
»I can imagine they want to gather as much information as possible to uncover dissent regarding their aggressive approach to Greenland, so they can fire anyone who has privately mocked the Trump administration’s rogue stance«, he writes.
The requested material covers roughly three months leading up to Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., visiting Nuuk on Tuesday, January 7 this year.
Donald Trump Jr.’s trip to Greenland, which lasted only one day, was not a major PR success, as he was met with a very limited number of Greenlanders who were fans of his father. The then-Greenlandic government was also not enthusiastic about the visit, which took place just over two weeks after Donald Trump, as the upcoming president, had shocked both Greenland and Denmark by describing American »ownership« of Greenland as »absolutely necessary«.
Specific requirements
The process at the embassy in Copenhagen and the consulate in Nuuk began when a high-ranking embassy official sent an email on June 13 to the approximately 30 employees, which included both Americans and Danes. Politiken is in possession of the email correspondence, which also shows that they were subsequently asked to upload the following material, dated from October 1, 2024, to January 7, 2025:
- All documents related to the »proposed purchase or acquisition of Greenlandic territory by the U.S.« – including all related diplomatic communication and emails »sent or received by any official or employee at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen or the U.S. Consulate in Nuuk«.
- All documents concerning Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to Greenland in January 2025.
- All emails sent to or received from the U.S. Consul in Nuuk, Monica Bland, containing »the term ’Trump’«.
The email from the high-ranking official was marked as »sensitive but unclassified«, and it does not indicate why emails sent or received from Consul Monica Bland were specifically requested. She has had a long career at the U.S. Department of State and has been stationed in Israel and Ukraine before coming to Greenland in July 2023.
In the email sent by the high-ranking embassy official on June 13, there were also other specifications regarding the order from Washington.
Employees in Copenhagen and Nuuk were instructed to hand over emails written in languages other than English – for example, Danish or Greenlandic.
Additionally, they were to hand over relevant calendars and computer drives, whether the drives were personal or office-related or stored in the cloud, as well as electronic messages written as SMS or on platforms like WhatsApp, »whether the platform is on a personal or department-issued device«.
If employees had written anything about the topics on social media or elsewhere, this content was also to be handed over.
The deadline for handing over all the requested material was June 20 – just one week later.
In a follow-up email, it was emphasized that the order included employees in several departments of the embassy in Copenhagen – including those dealing with trade and military affairs. This also applied to the department specifically dealing with the American military base Pituffik Space Base in Greenland.
As mentioned, the emails obtained by Politiken show that the high-ranking official acted on instructions from the U.S. Department of State in Washington, which needed the collected information to respond to a FOIA request.
FOIA stands for the Freedom of Information Act, which is the American equivalent of Denmark’s Public Administration Act.
»Please let me know when Copenhagen and Nuuk have completed this, thank you«, read an email from a State Department employee.
Once the information was collected, it would be processed and edited before being forwarded to the applicant behind the FOIA request.
Asha Rangappa, who previously conducted counterintelligence investigations as an agent for the FBI and now teaches U.S. security law at Yale University, questions whether the State Department is allowed to collect entirely private communications for a FOIA request.
»FOIA is intended to create transparency in the government, so I can’t see how it can be used for purely private communication that does not utilize government accounts or devices«, she writes in an email to Politiken.
Politiken has asked the embassy who is behind the request and whether the embassy considers it to be in line with normal practice. A spokesperson from the embassy wrote the following in an email to Politiken:
»The U.S. government refuses to comment on specific, internal official government communications. However, the U.S. Embassy takes its legal obligations seriously, including those under the Freedom of Information Act of 1967 (FOIA), which grants the public the right to request access to documents from any federal agency.«
The consulate in Nuuk informed Politiken that it has nothing to add.
Waited over eight years
Frank Jensen, a former operational chief at the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, has reviewed Politiken’s material and notes that the embassy in Copenhagen is taking the FOIA request so seriously that it is being personally handled by a high-ranking official.
»It’s well-known that Donald Trump doesn’t trust his own intelligence agencies. The request for access to documents and the way it’s worded might suggest that Trump or some of his associates suspect that someone at the embassy or consulate leaked information or acted disloyally during Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to Greenland. As a result, they may have asked some trusted and friendly individuals outside the government and intelligence agencies to try to identify the culprits,« he says.
Niels Bjerre-Poulsen, an associate professor at the Center for American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, cannot comment on the specific FOIA request, but in general, he believes it could be used in the Trump administration’s process of purging officials perceived as disloyal. Like several of the experts Politiken has spoken to, he also notes the speed with which the FOIA request is being handled.
»I myself have submitted a FOIA request to U.S. authorities that has taken the authorities over eight years to process«, he says.
Trump’s threats
It is currently unclear what plans President Donald Trump has for Greenland. He has repeatedly stated that it is crucial for U.S. national security that the U.S. takes over Greenland, and he has not ruled out a direct invasion. Trump has falsely claimed that Greenlanders want to become part of the U.S. Very few Greenlanders want this, according to polls.
When Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., landed in Nuuk on Monday, January 7 this year in his father’s private jet, it was supposed to kick off a charm offensive. Accompanying him were loyal Trump ally Sergio Gor, now the Chief of Staff at the White House, and right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. The organization specializes in mobilizing young Americans around conservative causes.
During his visit, Donald Trump Jr. went sightseeing around the city, stopping at the famous Hans Egede statue and having lunch with a group of 25 people at Hotel Hans Egede, where he also spoke with his father via video call. Several Greenlanders wearing MAGA hats posed with him. It later emerged that many of them were homeless and socially vulnerable individuals who had been picked up outside the Brugensi supermarket on Nuuk’s main street and had accepted the offer of a free lunch.
A few hours later, Donald Trump Jr. left Nuuk and flew to Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence is located.
The American embassy in Copenhagen is currently operating without an ambassador, as Ken Howery, the man Trump has appointed as the new U.S. ambassador to Denmark, has yet to be confirmed by Congress.
The 49-year-old Ken Howery was one of the co-founders of the tech firm PayPal along with billionaire Elon Musk. Trump has clearly signaled that he wants Ken Howery to focus on Greenland when he takes office.
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