Biden orders release of Trump White House logs to panel
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is ordering the release of Trump White House visitor logs to the House committee investigating the riot of Jan. 6, 2021, once more rejecting former President Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege.
The committee has sought a trove of data from the National Archives, including presidential records Trump had fought to keep private. The records being released are visitor logs showing appointment information for individuals who were allowed to enter the White House on the day of the insurrection.
In a letter sent Monday to the National Archives, White House counsel Dana Remus said Biden had considered Trump’s claim that because he was president at the time of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the records should remain private, but decided it was “not in the best interest of the United States” to do so.
She also noted that the Biden administration “voluntarily discloses such visitor logs on a monthly basis,” as did the Obama administration, and that the majority of the entries over which Trump asserted the claim would be publicly released under the current policy.
A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.
The Presidential Records Act mandates that records made by a sitting president and his staff be preserved in the National Archives, and an outgoing president is responsible for turning over documents to the agency when leaving office. Trump tried but failed to withhold White House documents from the House committee in a dispute that was decided by the Supreme Court.
Biden has already made clear that he is not invoking executive privilege concerning the congressional investigation unless he absolutely must. Biden has waived that privilege for much other information requested by the committee, which is going through the material and obtaining documents and testimony from witnesses, including some uncooperative ones.
The committee is focused on Trump’s actions from Jan. 6, when he waited hours to tell his supporters to stop the violence.