The White House released on Friday its first batch of documents revealing visits by official visitors, who came back to the Obama administration’s tradition but were dressed by Donald Trump.
The White House recorded 400 visits during the first 12 days of President Joe Biden. The White House usually sees hundreds of tourists daily, but the pandemic has greatly slowed down these visits.
“We are looking forward to seeing even more visitors on Whites House campus and back to the People’s House as vaccination increases and the pandemic response continues to advance,” the White House said in a statement.
Most meetings were virtual in the midst of the pandemic. Biden has been criticized for not planning to publish names of people participating in virtual meetings, claiming that previous governments have not issued telephone calls and the like.
The first group of names included famous secretaries of Cabinet such as the State minister, Antony Blinken, and the transport secretary, Pete Buttigieg, along with members of the military band on Inauguration Day and regular visits by the interpreters of the American Sign Language.
After Trump, his Republican predecessor declined to disclose the names of people from the White House Complex during a transition to the publication of white house visitor logs.
The Trump administration faced legal challenges and reached a settlement in 2018, which required some offices like the management and budget to issue monthly visitor logs. But it never spread to the White House as a whole.
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