Trump Administration Kills Open.Gov, Will Not Release White House Visitor Logs (techdirt.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: It will never be said that the Trump presidency began with a presumption of openness. His pre-election refusal to release his tax returns set a bit of precedent in that regard. The immediate post-election muffling of government agency social media accounts made the administration's opacity goals um clearer. So, in an unsurprising move, the Trump administration will be doing the opposite of the Obama administration. The American public will no longer have the privilege of keeping tabs on White House visitors. TIME reports: "The Trump Administration will not disclose logs of those who visit the White House complex, breaking with his predecessor, the White House announced Friday. White House communications director Michael Dubke said the decision to reverse the Obama-era policy was due to 'the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.' Instead, the Trump Administration is relying on a federal court ruling that most of the logs are 'presidential records' and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act." So, to further distance himself from the people he serves (and the people who elected him), Trump and his administration have shut down the transparency portal put in place by the previous Commander-in-Chief: "White House officials said the Administration is ending the contract for Open.gov, the Obama-era site that hosted the visitor records along with staff financial disclosures, salaries, and appointments. An official said it would save $70,000 through 2020 and that the removed disclosures, salaries and appointments would be integrated into WhiteHouse.gov in the coming months."

Comments

Obama was an exception, not Trump

[iMadeGhostzilla]

"Mr. Trump’s policy is a return to the one followed by presidents who preceded Mr. Obama." (NYT). No mention of that in the summary.

Re:Once again, Hillary did not win.

[RatPh!nk]

You mean the uranium deal regarding Russia’s nuclear power agency when it bought a controlling interest in a Toronto-based company? Which owns mines, mills and tracts of land in Wyoming, Utah and other U.S. states equal to about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity (not produced uranium)? When Clinton was secretary of state, but didn’t have the power to approve or reject the deal and the State Department was only one of nine federal agencies that signed off on the deal, and only President Barack Obama had the power to veto it? That uranium "scandal"?

I tried to look up "Clinton campaign contributions". But mostly got Breitbart and FoxNews.....oh! and the ever accurate "shadowproof.com"

Of course Trump doesn't have annnny connections to Russia except "ornate gold" - I think in particular he FBI, NSA, CIA and both House and Senate Intelligence committees are investigating this love, in fact. Nothing at all there....probably