Psaki: Biden White House will make visitor logs public

The White House will restart the release of its visitor logs once President-elect Joe Biden takes office, Biden transition spokesperson Jen Psaki announced Friday.

The move is a shift from President Donald Trump's White House, which kept visitor logs to core offices of the White House, including the West Wing, private. The Trump administration faced legal challenges to its position and settled a lawsuit in 2018 to allow monthly publication of visitor logs for some White House offices, including the Office of Management and Budget and the drug czar's office.

The Trump-era policy was criticized as a degradation of transparency from the previous administration. Under President Barack Obama, the White House regularly archived and released visitor logs for its core offices.

"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," Psaki, the incoming White House press secretary, tweeted Friday.