(New York Post) The Secret Service says it checked again and still can’t find any records that identify visitors to President Biden’s Delaware residences — where he has spent roughly one-fourth of his presidency — outraging Republicans and prompting one congressman to say “the stonewalling and gaslighting must stop.”
The agency made the baffling claim in its denial of a Freedom of Information Act appeal from The Post.
Secret Service deputy director Faron Paramore wrote in a letter dated Sept. 27 that “the agency conducted an additional search of relevant program offices for potentially responsive records.”
“This search also produced no responsive records,” Paramore wrote. “Accordingly, your appeal is denied.”
The Post is evaluating legal options to acquire records of who visited the president during the nearly 200 days he was at his Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach homes.
Biden spent about 28% of the days during his first year as president at least partially in Delaware, largely out of public view. He has spent an almost identical share of his second year as president in Delaware.
Transparency advocates of varying political stripes have fought in court for decades to identify presidential influencers, saying it’s important for the public to know who shapes government policy.
The Secret Service told The Post that it can’t find any records of the identifies of visitors to President Biden’s Delaware residences.REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Biden’s detractors, meanwhile, note that he made a habit of meeting with his family’s influence-seeking international business partners before he took office and question whether that remains the case.
Congressional Republicans are vowing to aggressively pursue transparency, including with regard to Biden’s link to his family’s consulting businesses, if they retake control of one or both chambers in the November midterm elections.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who is poised to lead the House oversight committee next year if Republicans retake the House, said the Secret Service should hand over records of the president’s guests.
“The claim that there are no visitor logs for President Biden’s Delaware residence is a bunch of malarky,” Comer told The Post.
“Americans deserve to know who President Biden is meeting with, especially since we know that he routinely met with [first son] Hunter’s business associates during his time as vice president,” Comer said.
Biden has spent roughly a quarter of his presidency in Delaware.REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
“The Biden administration must provide transparency to the American people.”
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.), an increasingly prominent House Republican who hosted the caucus’s recent “Commitment to America” campaign launch in his western Pennsylvania district, also called for visitor log transparency and vowed to get to the bottom of the president’s role in his family’s businesses.
“President Biden denies any involvement in his son’s business dealings, despite indisputable evidence of numerous meetings with his son’s business partners,” Reschenthaler said.
“I am deeply concerned by this blatant conflict of interest and its massive national security implications.”
“It is absolutely crucial that visitor log records for Biden’s homes in Delaware, where he spends a quarter of his time, be released to the public,” the congressman added.
“This administration’s stonewalling and gaslighting must stop. Next year, House Republicans will conduct a fair and transparent investigation into the Biden family’s influence peddling and deliver the American people the answers they deserve.”
Secret Service deputy director Faron Paramore wrote in a letter that the agency “conducted an additional search of relevant program offices” but were unable to recover any records about visitors.AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
The conservative transparency group Judicial Watch, meanwhile, has accused the Secret Service of playing a “shell game” with visitor logs by presumably possessing relevant information but claiming not to have it because they consider it to belong to the White House, which is generally exempt from FOIA.
“If the Secret Service is doing its job, there has to be visitor records,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “If there aren’t any records, the scandal is much bigger than just a lack of transparency.”
Biden took office last year vowing to uphold “the highest standards of transparency” and the White House congratulated itself shortly after he took office for resuming the partial release of West Wing visitor logs, which then-President Donald Trump discontinued in 2017.
Biden’s press office said in a release, “These logs give the public a look into the visitors entering and exiting the White House campus for appointments, tours, and official business — making good on President Biden’s commitment to restore integrity, transparency, and trust in government.”
But the White House has firmly refused to release similar records from Biden’s Delaware residences, saying that doing so would amount to an unnecessary intrusion into the president’s private life.
Biden promised to uphold the “highest standards of transparency” when he took office.REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last year and again in January that Biden would not voluntarily publish visitor logs from 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 last August.
“The president goes to Delaware because it’s his home. It’s also where his son and his former wife are buried. And it’s a place that is obviously close to his heart,” Psaki said in January.
“A lot of presidents go visit their home when they are president. We also have gone a step further than the prior administration and many administrations in releasing visitor logs of people who visit the White House and will continue to do that.”
Presidents can pick and choose what they reveal about White House visitor logs thanks to a 2013 DC Circuit appeals court ruling written by then-judge Merrick Garland, who now serves as Biden’s attorney general. Garland wrote for a three-judge panel that the president’s constitutional right to confidential communications means that FOIA doesn’t apply to visitor logs kept by the Secret Service — even though they otherwise would seem to meet the definition of “agency records.”
Garland’s ruling on White House visitor logs, however, has not been ratified by the Supreme Court, meaning that federal courts outside of DC are able to rule differently.
