Why Trump’s White House visitor logs matter

President Joe Biden’s decision not to support former president Donald Trump’s claim of executive privilege over White House visitor logs means the House select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection will soon know who was in the White House before and during the worst attack on the Capitol since 1814.

Last month, Mr Trump informed Archivist of the United States David Ferriero that he would claim executive privilege — a legal doctrine which protects communications between and among a president and his advisers — to keep the records, which show biographical information for individuals who pass through White House security checkpoints, from the select committee. But in a letter on Tuesday, White House Counsel Dana Remus informed Mr Ferriero that Mr Biden had determined that an assertion of executive privilege over Mr Trump’s visitor logs “not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified”.

“As a matter of policy, and subject to limited exceptions, the Biden Administration voluntarily discloses such visitor logs on a monthly basis. The Obama Administration followed the same practice. The majority of the entries over which the former President has asserted executive privilege would be publicly released under current policy,” she wrote. “As practice under that policy demonstrates, preserving the confidentiality of this type of record generally is not necessary to protect long-term institutional interests of the Executive Branch”.

Ms Remus also instructed Mr Ferriero to provide the House panel with the records within 15 days of his notification to Mr Trump, which means the visitor logs could be in committee members’ hands by the beginning of March. And while her letter noted that the archivist could refrain from turning over the records if blocked by a court order, such an order is unlikely to be imposed because the US Supreme Court has already denied Mr Trump’s previous attempt to keep White House records from the committee.

What is in White House visitor logs?

To gain entry to the White House complex — including the West Wing, East Wing, and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building that houses most of the president’s staff — one does not simply walk up to the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and ring a bell.

If one does not have the Secret Service-issued security badge required to pass through security (for example, the press pass The Independent uses to access the White House briefing room), an authorised White House staff member has to input your biographical details — first, middle and last name, date of birth, social security number, citizenship, gender, and city and state of residence — into a Secret Service-run database called the Worker And Visitor Entry System, or Waves.

Everyone entering the White House complex gets a pass — blue for the West Wing, green for the EEOB — which they must scan when they go through security and scan once more to open the gate when they leave. When arriving at a checkpoint, a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer checks identification to confirm that a visitor has been inputted into Waves.

Eventually, that information — who visited and who inputted them into Waves — becomes part of the visitor logs which the Biden administration releases each month, sans birthdays and social security numbers.

The version the committee will receive could include even more detail, including when a given visitor entered the complex, what level of access (blue or green) they were given, who authorised their entry into the complex, when they scanned their pass to enter, and when they scanned their pass to leave.

Why are they important to the Capitol riot probe?

One of the subjects the select committee is looking into is the range of schemes developed by Mr Trump and his allies in the days following his 3 November 2020 loss to install himself for a second term as president, contrary to the wishes of American voters.

Some of those plans, which were reportedly concocted by outside advisers to Mr Trump such as MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, attorney Sidney Powell, ex-Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and retired US Army colonel Phil Waldron, would have seen Mr Trump take extraordinary, extra-constitutional, and in all likelihood illegal steps to use the departments of defence, homeland security, or justice to seize voting machines in swing states he had lost to Mr Biden.

Access to the White House visitor logs will allow the select committee to determine who was in the White House at key moments leading up to the Capitol attack, as well as who allowed any of Mr Trump’s kitchen cabinet of alleged coup plotters into one of the most secure buildings in the world.