President Joe Biden, 78, goes home a lot.
Already, the president has headed home to Wilmington, Delaware, where he owns a massive mansion, some 17 times. But who he’s hanging out with there is apparently top secret.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Biden will not release any visitor logs on whom he meets with in Delaware — even though he claimed his administration would “restore transparency and trust in government.”
“The President’s been to Delaware 17 times — it’s soon going to be 18 and 19 times — over the past six months,” a reporter said to Psaki during the daily briefing. “I want to know how visits from visitors and from family members with potential conflicts of interest are being treated for the purposes of White House visitor log disclosure.”
“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.
Government watchdogs groups criticized the move, with one saying it “makes a mockery” of White House claims of visitor log transparency.
“It’s an easy way to bypass the alleged transparency they’re promising,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, told the New York Post. “If they’re going to take the position that this information should be public, what are they hiding when it comes to visiting his home? The presidency doesn’t stop when he’s visiting Delaware.”
“He is presumably doing work. 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,” Fitton said.
The Biden administration had patted itself on the back for resuming the practice of releasing visitor logs, at least partially. “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,” Biden’s press office said in May.
In the daily White House briefing, a reporter also asked two other questions about transparency.
“I was hoping that you could respond to Walter Shaub’s criticism of the First Son’s art sales. He says he wants to — ‘shame on the president if he doesn’t ask his son to stop.’ What exactly has the president said to his son?” the reporter said. “And the third question is: What spacing constraints are there in the White House East Room that are preventing us all from attending the event later today, especially considering there are no spacing constraints in this room?”
“Well, one, I think we wanted to make it as transparent as possible and make the entire meeting available to everyone who isn’t just in this room, so we are actually not discriminating against people who are covering the White House from outside of the White House briefing room,” Psaki said.
“Second, I would say, we — we have spoken extensively to the arrangements, which are not White House arrangements; they’re arrangements between Hunter Biden’s representatives and ones that we, certainly, were made aware of. I don’t think I have anything to add in that regard,” she said.