USA TODAY International Edition
Trump administration defines transparency downward
As a citizen who pays the president’s salary, you might have some crazy notion that you have a right to know who meets with him and his aides at the White House.
Well, apparently not while Donald Trump lives there.
The Trump administration is cutting off public access to White House visitor logs, which had been partially open for more than six years under President Obama. Those logs revealed the names of many of those who came to the complex, along with whom they visited and for what event.
President Obama was the first president to give the public a glimpse into the comings and goings at the White House, though he did so only after the administration was sued by public interest groups seeking visitor records. Officials settled the case in 2009, agreeing to release records “voluntarily.”
That gave the White House wide latitude over what was — and was not — revealed and avoided a court ruling that might have gone against the government. Some names were left out, detracting from the value of the logs to historians and reporters.
Even so, it certainly beat revealing nothing, as Trump intends to do.
The president has managed to achieve a new low in transparency, even trying to conceal how of- ten he plays golf and with whom he plays. More important, Trump is the only president in four decades to refuse to release tax information, a failure that makes Trump less transparent than President Nixon, who, during a 1973 tax controversy, released returns going back to 1969, his first year in office.
Trump's excuse for shielding his taxes, that he's under IRS audit, is as bogus as his communication director's excuse — “grave national security risks” — for shutting down the White House website that provided access to visitor logs.
Trump could release the logs, while making exceptions for national security, as his predecessor did. The public’s right to know who visits the president and his staff, especially large campaign donors and lobbyists for special interests, outweighs any individual’s personal interest in privacy. If you don’t want your identity known, don’t visit the White House. Try Skype. Or the telephone.
Presidents have long had a penchant for secrecy, engaging in a tug of war with reporters and public interest groups seeking to place more information in public view. It's time for Congress to pass a law making clear that White House visitor records are public. While they're at it, members of Congress should make their visitors subject to public scrutiny, too.
By breaking with the few examples of White House openness that exist — refusing to reveal tax returns and putting the White House visitor logs back under wraps — Trump is defining transparency downward and moving the presidency further back into the shadows.
How can you drain the swamp if unidentified swamp creatures are allowed to slither unnoticed into the White House?