After complaining for years about the amount of time Donald Trump spent on the golf course, thus far, President Joe Biden has spent roughly one-quarter of his entire time in office at his palatial homes in Delaware. But he doesn’t spend all of that time alone. He has many visitors, including congressional leaders and other officials. But specifically who has been visiting? We don’t know because no visitor logs or other records have been released to the press. The New York Post has been doggedly trying to track down those records from the Secret Service, finally resorting to filing FOIA requests to obtain them. This week, their most recent appeal of the denial of the release of such records was rejected yet again so we’re still in the dark.
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.”
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We already know why those records aren’t turning up. Among the flurry of executive orders that Biden issued upon taking office was one that exempted the visitor logs at his homes in Delaware from the Presidential Records Act. Back in January, amid repeated calls from the press, the White House defended the decision, saying Biden was fully within his rights to do so. That may be technically true, but the head of the “most transparent administration ever” certainly has been fixated on not telling the public any more than he absolutely has to.
Some of Biden’s defenders routinely ask why everyone is making such a big deal over this. The reason is simple. Knowing who is visiting Biden and privately bending his ear gives us a sense of who is influencing presidential policy. Also, if the names are known, the press can ask those people to comment on the topics that were discussed. Even if they refuse to answer, we still come away with a better idea of who is shaping the policies that impact the entire nation and even the world.
Congressman Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) has joined with James Comer of Kentucky (who will likely chair the House Oversight Committee if Republicans take back the gavel next year) in calling for an end to the “stonewalling and gaslighting.” None of them are saying that the President isn’t entitled to have private meetings, but this level of secrecy is worryingly excessive. Is Biden still having private meetings with his son Hunter Biden’s business partners? (Something that he repeatedly denied, but it’s now been proven that he lied about that. Just ask Tony Bobulinski if you doubt it.)
Back when Jen Psaki was still handling the White House press conferences, this subject came up and she said that releasing those visitor logs would be an “unnecessary intrusion into the president’s private life.” That might be true if the only people visiting him were family members coming over for dinner. But when top Congressional Democrats are ringing the bell, that’s not part of his “private life.” He’s doing business from his home at least part of the time and that is most certainly the public’s business.
There’s only one other possible explanation they could offer. They could try to claim that no official business takes place at Biden’s Delaware homes. But if so, that means that the President of the United States has been doing absolutely nothing for more than 25% of his time in office. Granted, having Joe Biden doing nothing is arguably better than having him issuing even more executive orders that wreck our energy infrastructure or making statements that seem designed to goad some of our adversaries into a nuclear conflict. But if he’s spending that much time doing nothing, why was he voted into office?
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