-By Warner Todd Huston
After running on the claim that he’d make presidential records more available and after criticizing George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney for “secret meetings” in the White House because visitor logs were kept from public view, the Obama administration continued the Bush era practice of keeping White House visitor logs secret. Now a court has ordered that Obama release those logs.
A federal judge in Washington D.C. ruled on August 17 that the White House visitor logs maintained by the Secret Service should be open to public access. U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell found that the visitor logs are Secret Service records and therefore do not fall under the president’s privilege. Therefore, the records are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIA).
Interestingly, Judge Howell was appointed to the bench by Obama but still ruled against his attempts to keep his White House visitors a secret. Good for her for actually adjudicating on the law and not on politics for a change.
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Court: Obama White House MUST Make Visitor Logs Public (Who Yelled About Bush’s ‘Secrets’)”