On March 27, the White House announced a “powerful new official mobile app,” calling it “the fastest, most powerful way to stay informed and engaged with the Trump Administration.”
While armchair developers and infosec experts have questioned some of the app’s technical design choices, a former FBI special agent uncovered an unusual fact: The small business owner behind the White House app has a side hobby as a conspiracy theorist.
The White House app was created by 45Press, a company based in Canfield, Ohio, a town of fewer than 8,000 people located roughly halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. (Donald Trump was the 45th president of the United States.) The company’s website describes it as a “design, development, and DevOps agency” and a WordPress VIP Agency Partner; it lists Amazon, NBC, and Sony as past clients.
According to his own X account, the CEO of 45Press, Joel Kendall, has a “hobby” running a social media presence and store under the name “Sir Storia,” which he calls “a website directory of historical and paranormal locations. If it was historical, paranormal or unexplained, we want it added!”
In August 2025, Kendall created a (now-defunct) online store offering T-shirts for sale of what he called “the most famous UFO events that ever happened in Ohio.” In a Facebook post, Kendall said he hoped his shop would be “the @walmart for UFOs, UAPs, Aliens, Paranormal and much more!”
His first T-shirt was about the Trumbull, Ohio, “UFO incident” in 1994. “If you’re a believer do you [sic] part for disclosure and get a shirt!” Kendall wrote.
Kendall has also put out multiple YouTube videos with titles like “Are Aliens and UFOs real? PROVE ME WRONG!” and “Did Nazis escape on a UFO?”
As of Tuesday afternoon, the “Aliens” video is no longer on YouTube. The “Nazis” video was recently “removed by the uploader,” according to the YouTube listing, and was deleted from Kendall’s Twitter account. Social media accounts under both the Sir Storia name and Kendall’s name have either been made private or deleted.
Neither Kendall nor the White House responded to Ars’ request for comment.
OrangeSlices.ai, a website that tracks government contracting, noted in February that 45Press beat out 10 other companies for the contract. According to the government’s Request for Quotation, the contract was for “Web hosting and development professional services” and required a firm that has a “WordPress CMS partner level of Silver or higher.”
Federal records show that the Executive Office of the President has so far obligated $1.4 million to 45Press for its services, though the contract has the “potential” to reach $8.4 million.
