Biden will restart releasing White House logbooks, spokeswoman says
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The West Wing visitor log will once again be an open book.
Visitor logs for key offices at the White House will start being released as soon as President-elect Joe Biden takes office Wednesday, incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted.
“For the sake of clarity—The Biden-Harris Administration will return to the policy of releasing White House visitor logs. Also true that visitors will be limited for some time because safety during the pandemic is top priority,” Psaki wrote.
The release undoes the log lockdown enacted by the Trump administration, a move to privacy that sparked a 2017 lawsuit and a later, separate agreement to allow monthly publication of logs from certain offices but not President Donald Trump himself.
The visitor sign-ins during the Trump administration will still be shielded for at least the next five years after Trump leaves office, a federal appeals court ruled last May.
Manhattan’s 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an effort by transparency advocates to force the release of the names of Trump’s visitors under the Freedom of Information Act, Business Insider reported at the time.
The Obama administration in September 2009 became the first to regularly release its visitor logs. Obama’s administration initially declined to release its visitor logs, in line with the practices of the Bush and Clinton administrations.
