White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday declined to specify whether President-elect Joe Biden’s administration would resume the tradition of publishing White House visitor records after Biden’s inauguration next week.
Psaki, who was present at a Biden transition team meeting on Friday afternoon, was asked whether his team would resume releasing visitor records after President Trump interrupted the practice during his term. In response, Psaki said the Biden government wants to “ensure that we are transparent”, but has not pledged to publish the records.
“I didn’t expect many visitors in the first few months, especially due to COVID,” said Psaki at the event. “It will be quite limited, but we will have more to say about it soon.”
Psaki added that the White House press team would have “more to say” about its ethics policy in the coming days. Biden will take office as president next Wednesday.
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The Trump administration stopped releasing the White House visitor records for public consumption in 2017, citing national security concerns.
The decision marked a reversal of the Obama-era practice of publishing the records and sparked a series of lawsuits by groups seeking to force the government to disclose them. The Clinton and Bush governments also restricted access to visitor records.
A communications director for the White House during the Obama administration, Psaki criticized Trump’s refusal to publish the records in recent years. In 2017, Psaki praised former Obama administration cabinet Ned Price for “invoking Trump’s bluff” about the security risks of releasing records in an opinion piece for Foreign Policy.
In a 2019 tweet, Psaki said the Obama administration’s policy of disclosing the records was “a headache at the time” but “good for democracy”.