Spicer: White House Following the Law on Visitor Logs

The White House is standing by its decision to keep its visitor logs secret, saying the Trump administration is following the same policy every president has ever used except the last one — and that, he said, was a lame attempt at transparency.

"We are following the law as both the presidential records act and the federal records act prescribe it," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday. "It's the same policy that every administration had, up until the Obama administration.

"Frankly, the faux attempt that the Obama administration put out, where they would scrub who they didn't want put out, didn't serve anyone well."

Spicer said President Donald Trump wants to make sure visitors to the White House can "express their views" without their names being made public. Under the policy, the visitor logs can be acquired through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The Obama administration released the logs but routinely scrubbed them of names they did not want made public. Spicer said that defeated the purpose of putting them out there.

"When you go through and scrub everyone's name out that you don't want everyone to know, that really is not an honest attempt at doing that," Spicer said. "They chose to not put people out for whatever reason. They gave an excuse. No one questioned it."

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