USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Trump administration tramples on transparency
The whole world is privy to President Trump’s innermost thoughts almost any time of the day or night via his frequently erupting Twitter account.
But try finding out who visited the White House, and suddenly you’re in top-secret territory. It’s the same for visitors to Mar-a-Lago, where Trump spends so many weekends, and most famously for Trump’s tax returns, which he has refused to release despite an unbroken presidential tradition of doing so going back four decades.
Last month, keeping part of a preinauguration promise, the Trump Organization announced it had donated profits from “foreign government patronage” to the U.S. Treasury. The organization failed, however, to reveal key details: how much money, which Trump properties were involved and what foreign entities were the sources.
The veil of secrecy doesn’t end there. Across government, the Trump administration has shrouded much information that was once public, from crime statistics to records of kennels that mistreat puppies.
Too often, the president and his appointees seem to forget that they work for the people, that government information is gathered at taxpayer expense, and that one of the hallmarks of a democracy is free and open access to government activities.
White House visitor logs — first opened to the public under President Obama — are one of the most damaging pullbacks from accessibility.
Names of visitors can give insight into lobbyists, business leaders and others who seek to influence public policy behind closed doors. That’s just as important at the Mar-a-Lago resort, where anyone wealthy enough to plunk down the initiation fee can gain access to the president who, by the way, will eventually profit from those fees.
During this Sunshine Week (which began on Sunday), when journalists and open-government advocates try to remind everyone of the people’s right to know, it’s worth cataloging some of the ways this administration has missed the point:
❚ The FBI’s annual crime report, the gold standard for identifying crime trends, was missing significant amounts of data traditionally included when it came out last fall. That spurred two leading groups of criminologists to complain about the “unnecessary and surprising removal” and call on the FBI to restore the data. The missing tables could impede research on domestic violence and on one of the administration’s stated priorities, crimes involving drugs.
❚ The Environmental Protection Agency, once host of the go-to website for scientific data and practical advice on climate change, has obscured information on the topic, using means such as removing a climate change link on its homepage. The public, which visited the EPA site more than 33 million times during a recent 90-day period, has to hunt for this critical data — a task that fits perfectly with Trump’s view that climate change isn’t a serious problem.
❚ An Agriculture Department website was once the place to check how animals were being treated — or mistreated — by commercial dog breeders, research facilities, and horse owners and trainers. It was a resource for journalists, animal welfare advocates, and prospective buyers of dogs and horses. No more. While the agency has restored some data and still publishes inspection records, USDA blocks names of most breeders, citing “privacy” concerns. Hiding names of federally licensed businesses that violate rules and harm animals hardly seems like an advance in good government.
The Trump administration is far from the first to secrete information or drag its feet on releasing it. Even so, the administration’s efforts at secrecy are both spread across many areas of public interest and narrowly tailored to shroud actions of the president.
Lip service to openness isn’t enough. Nor is the president’s Twitter account. You might even call it “fake transparency.”