Biden orders release of Trump's White House visitor logs to January 6 committee

Following claims of executive privilege from former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden is ordering the release of the former president’s White House visitor logs to the January 6 House select committee.

In a letter obtained by the Associated Press and addressed to David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, counsel to the president Dana Remus said the president has "considered the former President’s claims," but ultimately determined that "an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interest of the United States, and therefore is not justified, as to these records and portions of records."

The letter states that the records in question are "entries in visitor logs showing appointment information for individuals who were processed to enter the White House complex, including on January 6, 2021."

The letter continued on to state that the Biden Administration voluntarily discloses these visitor logs on a monthly basis, as was the practice of the Obama administration.

"The majority of the entries over which the former President has asserted executive privilege would be publicly released under current policy," Remus wrote. "As practice under that policy demonstrates, preserving the confidentiality of this type of record generally is not necessary to protect long-term institutional interests of the Executive Branch."

Citing her letter to Ferriero on October 8, 2021, Remus wrote: "The insurrection that took place on January 6, and the extraordinary events surrounding it, must be subject to a full accounting to ensure nothing similar ever happens again.

"Congress has a compelling need in service of its legislative functions to understand the circumstances that led to… the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal Government since the Civil War… Constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself."

"Accordingly, President Biden does not uphold the former President’s assertions of privilege," Remus wrote. "He therefore instructs you, in accord with Section 4(b) of Executive Order 13489, to provide to the Select Committee the records and portions of records identified as privileged by the former President."

The letter gives 15 days for these pages to be released to the committee, and added that entries associated with appointments designated either as national-security sensitive ("NSS") or otherwise-highly sensitive ("OHS") be treated as "confidential" and to "refrain from sharing or discussing such entries outside the Select Committee without prior consultation."

According to the Associated Press, "The Presidential Records Act mandates that records made by a sitting president and his staff be preserved in the National Archives, and an outgoing president is responsible for turning over documents to the agency when leaving office."

Trump had attempted to withhold White House documents from the House committee, with the dispute ultimately being decided by the Supreme Court.

Investigators are also seeking communications between the National Archives and Trump’s aides regarding the around 15 boxes of records that the National Archives recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida, and what these boxes contained.

In addition, White House call logs obtained by the committee so far have not listed calls made by Trump as the violence unfolded at the Capitol building, nor do they list calls made directly to the president, according to the Associated Press.

The lack of information regarding these calls has proved to be a challenge for investigators, with some explanations for the absence of these calls being the use of a personal cell phone, or one that was passed to him by an aide.