White House visitor logs, also known as the White House Worker and Visitor Entry System, are the guestbook records of individuals visiting the White House to meet with the President of the United States or other White House officials.
History
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. Groups such as Judicial Watch, CREW, and have been suing the government to release such logs under the Freedom of Information Act since at least the early 2000s. The Clinton and Bush administrations refused to release visitor records to the public, arguing they are part of presidential communications and not public records. The Obama administration, however, after initially following the same policy, 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. It was the first US administration to release those logs to the public. The logs were nonetheless redacted to remove sensitive meetings and purely personal guests. Logs for the period between January 20 and September 15, 2009, are subject to different policy and require specific requests. The Trump administration withdrew its support for release of the logs, and is not making visitor logs available to the public, though some comments suggest the logs could be made available "five years after Trump leaves office". This has led to several groups suing the government again, demanding the release of such logs, which should be seen as a matter of public record.
Analysis
While Obama's release of the logs was generally praised by transparency activists, the Sunlight Foundation noted, "The voluntary system can be too easily circumvented. Because it only captures visitors to the White House, if an administration official wishes to keep a meeting with a lobbyist secret, he or she merely has to schedule it at a nearby location" and "Phone calls are also used to avoid disclosure". Omission of significant visits was criticised by other groups. Time noted that "The Obama-era process allowed the White House Counsel’s office to unilaterally redact records of those visiting the complex for any reason. The Obama Administration, for instance, took a wide-ranging view of what were considered personal events hosted by the Obamas, leaving off celebrity sightings and meetings with top donors." The visitors could request to have their records shielded from public through a simple checkbox on the visitor form. A 2017 study showed that companies whose executives have met the president report a raise of their share values, by approximately 0.5% following a month or two after the disclosure of the meeting. The authors note that direct causation is difficult to prove, but it is likely that investors view such news as indication that companies will perform better, for example winning more government procurement contracts. That study identified 2,286 meetings between corporate executives and federal government officials with the top three most frequent visitors for that period being David M. Cote, Jeffrey R. Immelt and Roger C. Altman. The top three most frequent visitees by corporate executives in that period were Valerie Jarrett, Jeff Zients, and the President himself.
