Secrecy policy on White House visitors
Reversing a policy of the Obama era, the Trump administration announced yesterday that it will not release records on visitors to the White House, claiming that doing so would present ‘‘grave national security risks and privacy concerns.’’
Under the new policy, logs of people entering the White House to lobby or meet with the president or his aides will not be made public until five years after President Donald Trump leaves office.
Watchdog groups on the left and right quickly denounced the decision, arguing it casts a shroud on whom the president is meeting with and what groups are trying to influence him.
‘‘This new secrecy policy undermines the rule of law and suggests this White House doesn’t want to be accountable to the American people,’’ said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group.
‘‘The only excuse for this policy is that the Trump administration has something to hide,’’ said David Donnelly, who heads Every Voice, a liberal group that tracks influence in politics. ‘‘This kind of secrecy will allow big donors, lobbyists and special interests to have unknown levels of influence in the White House.’’
White House officials argued that the new policy is needed to help the president meet freely with outside advisers.
Visitation to the White House has been a hot issue for many administrations, but it has been in the spotlight recently because of US Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican who previously was heading the House of Representatives investigation into the White House and foreign influence.
Last month, Nunes stunned his committee colleagues by revealing that he had seen secret documents revealing that members of the Trump transition team had turned up in legally authorised intercepts of foreign officials.
Days later, Nunes was forced to acknowledge that the documents had come from the White House and he had travelled there to view them. At first, Nunes and Trump had declined to name whom Nunes had visited and who had cleared him onto the grounds. Usually, with some exemptions, such information is in the visitor logs.
Paul S. Ryan, a vice president at Common Cause, said such meetings would be harder to track with Trump’s new policy. In a statement, he called it ‘‘the latest example of a disturbing Trump administration pattern of withholding from the public information regarding everything from the president’s personal business dealings and tax returns to his latenight White House visitors like House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes.’’
White House Communications Director Michael Dubke rejected claims that the administration is attempting to avoid public scrutiny.
‘‘By instituting historic restrictions on lobbying to close the revolving door, expanding and elevating ethics within the White House Counsel’s Office and opening the White House press briefing room to media outlets that otherwise cannot gain access, the Trump administration has broken new ground in ensuring our government is both ethical and accessible to the American people.’’