In the first study of its kind, we used the Obama administration’s White House visitor logs from 2009–2015 to identify 2,286 meetings between federal government officials and corporate executives from S&P 1500 firms. We found that money can buy you greater access to the White House, and that for corporations, that access translated into big returns on Wall Street.
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Read More… from Scholars: When CEOs Visit the White House, Their Companies Profit
President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday that the White House won’t release records of its visitors, raising new concerns from transparency advocates.
The decision not to voluntarily disclose White House visitor logs is a break from the policy of former President Barack Obama’s administration, even though Trump had called his predecessor the “least transparent president.”
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From The Blog of Legal Times:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled today that records of visitors to the White House were off limits to requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Allowing public access to the information would circumvent Congress' intent to give the president discretion to keep his appointments calendar secret, the court said.
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Read More… from D.C. Circuit rejects FOIA access to White House visitor logs
A few national and state FOIA and open government news items selected from many of interest that we might or might not have drawn attention to earlier in the week:
ACLU sues DOJ for digital surveillance data
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