The Atlantic

Why the White House's Secrecy Over Visitor Logs Isn't a Crisis

Had the Trump administration decided to voluntarily release them, officials still would have had free rein to conceal meetings they didn’t want the public to know about.
Source: Saul Loeb / Getty Images

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it would end the last administration’s practice of making White House visitor logs public, returning to the standard of every president prior to Barack Obama. It wasn’t a particularly surprising move. The president has been remarkably consistent in deviating from good-government norms, including his refusal to disclose his tax returns, his disregard for potential conflicts of interest surrounding his company, and his filling federal agencies with industry lobbyists despite a promise to “drain the swamp.”

Though this latest change seems to fit a larger pattern of governing, the Trump administration has defended itself by citing those decades of precedent. “And frankly,” Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Monday, “the faux attempt that

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