Washington, D.C., April 10, 2017 – The National Security Archive, together with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), are filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for the release of the White House visitor logs today, April 10, in the federal District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit seeks only the same data that was routinely published by the Obama administration for seven years without incident.
As the WashingtonPost reports,”Since President Trump took office in January, the website where such records had been publicly available has gone dark, and White House officials will say only that the policy is under review, making no assurances that they will operate with the same openness.”
The Archive suit seeks to establish that the visitor logs are agency records subject to the FOIA. “President Obama routinely released the data we’re seeking with no damage to presidential privilege,” said the National Security Archive’s Director Tom Blanton, “and this information is central to the Secret Service mission and thus clearly agency records subject to FOIA.”