The records are covered by presidential privilege, a legal tenet that allows for the withholding of some executive-branch information.
President Biden determined that asserting executive privilege is not in the country’s best interests, and therefore not justified, as to these records and portions of records, according to a February 15 letter from Dana Remus, White House counsel to David Ferriero, the United States archivist.
According to a letter released on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden has rejected former President Donald Trump’s executive privilege arguments and ordered the National Archives and Records Administration to release White House visitor logs to be provided to the commission probing the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack, The New York Times reported.
The letter from Remus was first reported by the New York Times.
The data in question, according to Remus, includes entries in visitor logs that contain appointment information for persons allowed to access the White House premises, such as on January 6, 2021.
Trump asserted executive privilege over a subset of the documents and portions of the records, preventing their publication, but Remus told Ferriero that Mr. Biden disagrees.
While Trump blocked the visitor data from public view on national security grounds, the Biden administration voluntarily distributes such visitor logs on a monthly basis, with some caveats, wrote Remus.
Remus also said that under the present protocol, the majority of the entries that the former President has claimed executive privilege will be made public, Remus wrote.
Anyone who does not have a permanent pass to access the White House complex, which includes not only the White House but also numerous nearby office buildings, must submit personal information to be cleared in. The White House Worker and Visitor Entry System is usually handled by an assistant in the office they are visiting (dubbed WAVES).
Many key aides of Trump spent time at the White House and had a hand in events that lead to the January 6th attack, including Rudy Giuliani, organizing a bowl over of the election results. Lawyer John Eastman, who had influenced Trump with the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could end congressional certification of the election results, and Michael Flynn, former national security advisor, who frequently threw around conspiracy theories about voter fraud, were also among those who spent time at the White House.
In October, Trump filed a lawsuit to prevent an initial batch of records from reaching the January 6 committee, kicking off a protracted legal struggle that culminated in the Supreme Court denying Trump’s plea to prevent the materials from reaching the Archives in January.
Last month, the Archives gave the committee access to some of the materials, some of which had been pulled apart and taped back together.
It is unclear how extensive the visitor logs were during the Trump administration, or what the logs would reveal to the committee.
