Transparency advocates call on Trump to release White House visitor logs

Gabe Kaminsky, Washington Examiner

The first Trump administration’s decision not to disclose who visited the president and attended meetings with federal officials departed from the policy of former President Barack Obama, whose White House released records roughly three months after visits occurred. Over the last four years, President Joe Biden reinstated the Obama-era rule for the logs on a monthly basis.

For Biden and Trump, questions surrounding the scope of what exactly visitor logs should encompass have been top of mind for watchdog groups.

Progressives sought filings for visitors to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, but a court panel ruled in 2020 that disclosure was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act over privacy concerns.

Last January, the White House said it did not track visitor logs for Biden’s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified documents were located and at the center of a federal investigation.

Michael Chamberlain, director of the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust, said it’s a clear transparency lapse that the Biden administration did not release visitor logs for Biden’s Delaware residence.

“President Biden has spent a significant amount of time during his presidency in Delaware, but his administration has not only resisted providing those visitor logs but claimed they did not even keep them,” said Chamberlain, a former Trump administration official.

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