The White House will not release visitor logs during President Donald Trump’s second term, Fox News has confirmed.
The move mirrors the policy of his first administration, a White House official told the Washington Examiner.
Trump’s first administration made the announcement of keeping White House visitors secret in April 2017, according to the Washington Post.
‘After four years of the Biden administration’s empty promises, lies, and secrets, President Trump is giving the people and the press a level of access and transparency never seen before,’ White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the media outlet.
Releasing visitor logs is not a requirement since they are protected by the Presidential Records Act, which shields the records from public release until five years after a president leaves office, the Examiner said.
President Joe Biden consistently released visitor records at the beginning of each month throughout his term.
At the beginning of Biden’s presidency, media outlets praised the Biden administration for resuming the release of visitor logs after the Trump administration stopped the practice during his term. The New York Times spoke highly of the practice as ‘part of an effort to restore transparency to government.’
However, a Bloomberg review of logs from his first two years of office revealed disclosure gaps.
Back in November, the White House had still not released its visitor logs for July, the month Bide gave up his re-election bid, leaving questions about who was seeing and advising the president before he made the historic decision to drop out.
Former President Barack Obama was the first president to disclose visitor logs, the Examiner reported.
Fox News Digitals’ Peter Pinedo contributed to this report.