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New White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined on Friday to comment on whether President-elect Joe Biden’s administration would resume the tradition of publishing White House visitors’ diaries after Biden’s inauguration next week.
Psaki, who was present at a Biden transition team briefing on Friday afternoon, was asked if his team would resume publishing visitor logs after President Trump halted the practice during his tenure. In response, Psaki said the Biden administration wants to “make sure we’re transparent,” but has not made a commitment to publish the papers.
“I wouldn’t expect a lot of visitors in the first few months, especially due to COVID,” Psaki said at the event. “It will be fairly limited, but we’ll have more to say about it soon.”
Psaki added that the White House press team would have “more to say” on its ethics policy in the coming days. Biden will be sworn in as president next Wednesday.
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The Trump administration stopped publishing White House visitor logs for public consumption in 2017, citing national security concerns.
The move marked a reversal of the Obama-era practice of publishing newspapers and sparked a series of lawsuits from groups seeking to force the administration to disclose them. The Clinton and Bush administrations have also restricted access to visitor logs.
White House communications director under the Obama administration, Psaki has criticized Trump’s refusal to publish newspapers in recent years. In 2017, Psaki praised former Obama administration office Ned Price for “calling Trump’s bluff” on the security risks of newspaper publishing in an op-ed for Foreign Policy.
In a 2019 tweet, Psaki said the Obama administration’s policy of publishing newspapers was “a headache at the time” but “good for democracy.”
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