Biden Will Not Share Visitor Logs From Delaware Residences Despite 'Commitment to Transparency'

In the last six months, US President Joe Biden has made 17 trips to his home state of Delaware. According to the New York Post, he usually stays at his home in Wilmington, sometimes using a vacation home in Rehoboth Beach.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that President Joe Biden does not intend to release visitor logs from his residences in Delaware.

“I can confirm we are not going to be providing information about the comings and goings of the president’s grandchildren or people visiting him in Delaware,” Psaki said at her daily presser, when asked by a New York Post reporter about whether Biden intends to reveal visitor logs of his Delaware residences, including of relatives with possible conflicts of interest.

The decision not to disclose visitor logs from Delaware - where Biden has traveled 17 times in the past six months - comes despite the current administration's focus on restoring "transparency and trust in government".

Earlier, the administration moved to shed light on White House visitor logs, after the Trump cabinet ended the practice introduced by former US President Barack Obama.

Trump remarked that Obama's practice to reveal some of the logs was "phony transparency" that could pose "grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.”

Biden's return to the disclosure of some logs was made in May 2021, "making good on President Biden’s commitment to restore integrity, transparency, and trust in government", according to the White House. However, the administration admitted that some records will remain concealed due to privacy or security concerns.

Tom Fitton, president of a conservative group, Judicial Watch, cited by New York Post, slammed the move to conceal the Delaware visitor logs as an "easy way to bypass" the commitment to transparency.

"He is presumably doing work [in Delaware]," Fitton noted. "So the public has an interest in knowing who is visiting him there. Is Hunter [Biden] visiting him? … [Joe Biden] is the one who had Hunter at the vice president's office meeting with his business partners."

Psaki outlined that the president is always working, regardless of his location.

Under a federal appeals court ruling written by Attorney General Merrick Garland during his tenure as a judge, US presidents are free to choose what to reveal about their visitor logs, as the AG pointed out that the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to their logs.