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Undated: White House visitor logs, also known as the White House Worker and Visitor Entry System (WAVE), are the guestbook records of individuals visiting the White House to meet with the President of the United States or other White House officials.
The release of some logs to the public have been a goal of, and can be credited to the pressure from, watchdog groups concerned with possible undue influence of lobbyists over the US government.[1] Groups such as Judicial Watch, CREW, and The National Security Archive have been suing the government to release such logs under the Freedom of Information Act since at least the early 2000s.[2][3] The Clinton and Bush administrations refused to release visitor records to the public, arguing they are part of presidential communications and not public records.[1] The Obama administration, however, after initially following the same policy,[4] eventually reversed it and by mid-2009 released the visitor logs as part of its stated commitment to government transparency, under the White House Voluntary Disclosure Policy.[5] It was the first US administration to release those logs to the public.[6][7] The logs were nonetheless redacted to remove sensitive meetings (such as visits by potential Supreme Court nominees) and purely personal guests.[5][8] Logs for the period between January 20 and September 15, 2009, are subject to different policy and require specific requests.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_visitor_logs
Ongoing: All the President’s Guests ... The unauthorized White House visitor logs
POLITICO’s Unauthorized White House Visitor Logs stand in for the official record, which the administration has decided not to release publicly.
To build a better, completely public visitor log, we compiled not just visits to the White House, but interactions that include in-person meetings with the president at Mar-a-Lago and other venues, appearances at events and documented phone calls with foreign leaders and other politicians.
We welcome your tips as we continue to grow the log. Send any names we may have missed to us at trumpvisitors@politico.com.
Here’s what we know so far (Read the story!):
https://www.politico.com/interactives/databases/trump-white-house-visitor-logs-and-records/index.html
-- 2017 --
March 24: Senate Democrats are doubling down on their effort to force the Trump administration to publicly release visitor logs for the White House and Mar-a-Lago with a bill named for Trump's Florida resort. ...Democrats have hounded the Trump administration to continue the Obama-era practice of publicly releasing visitor logs, and they want him to extend it to the Florida resort he has called the "winter White House."
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/325651-dems-introduce-bill-to-publish-mar-a-lago-white-house-visitor-logs
April 14: The Trump Administration will not disclose logs of those who visit the White House complex, breaking with his predecessor, the White House announced Friday ... the Trump administration is relying on a Federal court ruling that most of the logs are "presidential recores" and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
http://time.com/4740499/white-house-visitor-logs-public-record-trump/
April 14: Transparency advocates are protesting the White House's decision against releasing visitor logs for the White House complex.
http://time.com/4741065/white-house-visitor-logs-transparency-letter/
September 15: Trump administration withholds almost all Mar-a-Lago visitor logs
For weeks, ethics watchdog groups had a countdown clock on Twitter promising the public its first glimpse at who has been visiting President Donald Trump's "Winter White House" at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year.
Instead, on Friday the Trump administration turned over a list of only 22 names of foreign dignitaries and staffers related to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's February trip to the Florida resort.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/politics/secret-service-maralago-logs/index.html
September 15: 'Spitting in the eye of transparency': Trump administration releases visitor logs from Mar-a-Lago, but it's only a list of 22 Japanese officials
... one reason the request yielded such limited results was that the logs simply weren't being kept
http://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-mar-a-lago-visitor-logs-2017-9
November 21: Here Are the White House Visitor Records the Trump Administration Didn’t Want You to See
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/wh-complex
November 22: Wall Street billionaires, corporate lobbyists and far right conservatives flooded the White House almost immediately after Donald Trump’s presidential victory, newly released White House visitor logs reveal.
The White House was forced to release the list of visitors to five federal offices after the Washington transparency group Property of the People sued under the Freedom of Information Act. The searchable logs, published Tuesday by ProPublica, provide a glimpse into the creation of the president’s political agenda, spearheaded almost entirely by business interests, with little input from consumer advocacy or humanitarian groups.
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-white-house-billionaires-big-business-interests-visitor-logs-719721
-- 2018 --
February 15: Trump administration agrees to post visitor logs for some White House offices
The Trump administration has agreed to settle a pending lawsuit by making monthly public postings of details on visitors to some parts of the White House, such as the Office of Management and Budget and the drug czar's office.
However, there is no sign the Trump White House plans to reverse its decision to abandon the Obama administration's policy of releasing information on visitors to the White House's core offices, including the senior officials in the West Wing.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/15/trump-visitor-logs-white-house-413016
July 26: A federal judge has rejected a bid by several public interest groups to force release of a broad set of logs of visitors to the Trump White House.
In a ruling Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Failla declined to depart from a 2013 federal appeals court decision that found visitor records for the Obama White House were not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
As a Manhattan-based judge, Failla was not obligated to follow the 2013 opinion from the D.C. Circuit, but most judges defer to that court on FOIA matters and she chose to do so in the legal fight over the White House logs.
The National Security Archive, the Knight First Amendment Institute and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed suit last year in an effort to get details on who was visiting the Trump White House, as well as other places frequented by the president, such as his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/26/trump-white-house-visitor-logs-judge-disclosure-745120
From Politico:
We welcome your tips as we continue to grow the [visitor] log. Send any names we may have missed to us at trumpvisitors@politico.com.
Here’s what we know so far (Read the story!):
https://www.politico.com/interactives/databases/trump-white-house-visitor-logs-and-records/index.html
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