HAND THEM OVER

Biden Blows Up Trump Plan to Keep Jan. 6 Visitor Logs Secret

Trump has argued that the White House visitor logs are subject to executive privilege.

Donald Trump won’t be getting any help from President Joe Biden in his quest to keep White House visitor logs out of the hands of the House investigators probing the Capitol riot. The New York Times reports that Biden has decided the visitor logs are not subject to executive privilege—as Trump had attempted to argue—and has instructed the National Archives to hand them to the House panel within the next 15 days. A letter to the Archives from White House counsel, Dana Remus, reportedly said the logs in question show “appointment information for individuals who were processed to enter the White House complex, including on Jan. 6, 2021,” but it’s not clear if the Trump White House kept a complete record of visitors. The Trump administration argued in 2017 that visitor logs should be kept secret because of “the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.”