Drawance at the White House: Visitor records will be made public again by the Biden administration

Visitor records from key White House offices will be known to the public again as soon as President-elect Joe Biden takes office, future press secretary Jen Psaki announced on Twitter, according to DPA and Agerpres.

“For the sake of clarity, the Biden-Harris administration will resume the policy of making the White House’s visitor records public. It is true, however, that visits will be limited for a period because pandemic safety is a priority,” she wrote.

The Trump administration had decided to secretthe the books, a move that led to a lawsuit in 2017, and then a separate agreement was reached to allow monthly publication of the books for certain offices, but not those with visits to Donald Trump himself.

The court had at the time rejected the lawyers’ request to obtain publication of the names of Trump’s visitors in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.

However, visitor records during the Trump administration will still be secreted for at least another five years after the Republican president’s departure, as a federal appeals court ruled in May.

The Obama administration was the first to regularly release visitor records in September 2009. Initially, the Obama administration had refused to do so, in line with practices during the Bush and Clinton administrations.

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