A committee in the House of Representatives is looking for ways to force the White House into revealing the virtual visitor logs that have kept the public in the dark since President Joe Biden took the oath of office in January.
The House Appropriations Committee is reportedly looking to use the “power of the purse” to retroactively push the West Wing into revealing who has been virtually meeting in the White House since January.
The Biden White House only started to disclose their “in-person” logs. Because of the pandemic, the White House was forced to put “huge segments of its work into cyberspace, and transparency advocates say the continued refusal to disclose virtual visitors is keeping the public in the dark,” Axios reported.
The Appropriations Committee, which House Democrats lead, looks to pressure the White House to produce virtual visitor logs, in addition to their in-person logs. In the report by the committee, the “general government appropriations bill directs the White House to retroactively reveal all virtual visitors going back to Biden’s Inauguration Day.”
The committee said it is “concerned that social-distancing procedures and the resulting increase in virtual meetings will limit the amount of relevant disclosures and harm the public interest.” The report from the committee also instructs the “president’s staff to brief the committee on its efforts to disclose that information by the fall.”
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), who chairs the committee’s panel on financial services and general government, added the specific language to the report and said the administration’s lack of keeping and releasing the virtual visitor logs is “a loophole.”
“While I am very encouraged that the Biden Administration reinstated the policy of publicly disclosing their White House visitor logs in May, I look forward to working with them to establish virtual visitor logs to ensure and expand accountability in the executive branch,” Quigley said.
Axios noted the language put in the report from the congressman is not legally binding, due to the language being in the report and not included directly in the appropriations bill. Quigley’s office believes the White House will “play ball,” according to the report.
Before Biden was inaugurated, his press secretary Jen Psaki touted in a tweet from her personal account that the White House will return to the policy of releasing the visitor logs, citing safety during the pandemic as the top priority:
For the sake of clarity—The Biden-Harris Administration will return to the policy of releasing White House visitor logs. Also true that visitors will be limited for some time because safety during the pandemic is top priority.
— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) January 16, 2021
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