WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration cannot release visitor logs from former President Donald Trump’s White House, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a news briefing on Wednesday.
The White House said on Tuesday it would look into whether it can make visitor logs from Trump’s administration public, a move that would be in line with the Biden administration’s vow to release its own records.
The logs detail who visits the president and his staff on official business and enable the public to know which lobbyists, political donors and others are gaining access to the chief executive and his aides on a daily basis.
The logs became a bone of contention in 2017 when the Trump administration said it would not release them. It kept private the visitor logs to core offices of the White House – including the West Wing – and that decision faced legal challenges for its lack of transparency.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose, Steve Holland, Susan Heavey and David Brunnstrom)
