“On the Holmes Front,” with Frank Holmes
Joe Biden has said he wants his presidency to return the government to “normal,” the way it was under Barack Obama—and he’s proved it by reviving the worst stonewalling of the Obama era.
Biden has only been president for 45 days, but he’s already mired in a scandal over secret White House meetings.
Biden has decided to break his campaign pledge and keep the country in the dark about who visits the White House…just like Obama fought transparency tooth-and-nail.
Both promised openness—and both shut the American people out in the cold by refusing to release White House visitor logs.
The Secret Service writes down the name of everyone who scores a meeting with the president in person, and their names tell you who has the greatest influence over the most powerful man—and woman—in the world.
But somebody doesn’t want you to know who that is.
Before the inauguration Jen Psaki, the spokeswoman for the Biden transition team, said that Joe Biden wanted everyone to know who he’s meeting—the American people deserve it!
“For the sake of clarity,” she tweeted, “the Biden-Harris Administration will return to the policy of releasing White House visitor logs.”
For the sake of clarity—The Biden-Harris Administration will return to the policy of releasing White House visitor logs. Also true that visitors will be limited for some time because safety during the pandemic is top priority.
— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) January 16, 2021
But 45 days into the 46th presidency, we’ve gotten nothing. In fact, worse than nothing…we’ve gotten insulting cracks.
At Monday’s daily White House press briefing, Psaki smarted off to a reporter who dared to ask why the White House hasn’t released its visitors list, as promised.
“He’s meeting with members of the Senate virtually today,” Psaki replied.
“There, I’ve released it for you. What else would you like to know?” Psaki smirked.
So much for transparency!
Biden and Harris’ daily schedules aren’t posted online, either…which raises lots of questions.
Who’s our president meeting with? Who’s our vice president, Kamala Harris, making policy with? Which lobbyists get to put their two cents in on the Biden administration’s actions? Who’s got the administration’s ear?
We have no idea…and that’s just the way the Democrats like it.
Biden learned how to hide what’s really happening from the best—his old boss, Barack Hussein Obama.
Obama said he would release visitor logs when he took office in 2009, too, just like Biden.
And he kept those records clutched tight in his fist, just like Biden.
The legal watchdog group Judicial Watch had to sue, repeatedly, to pry the public records out of the administration.
After a huge scandal, Obama decided to “voluntarily” release some—but not all—of the records…but what came out was embarrassing enough.
The logs revealed that Obama’s office was overrun by extremists and left-wing nutcases.
A “Malik Shabazz” visited…Malik Zulu Shabazz was leader of the New Black Panther Party, which had business pending with the Justice Department over possible voter intimidation against white voters in Philadlephia in 2008. Obama dropped those charges.
Obama insisted this was a “different” Malik Shabazz…but he refused to say who this person, with a pretty unique name, might be.
Another log showed that an Obama fundraiser named Jodie Evans visited a White House staffer in 2009—a few weeks after visiting the terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
No wonder Obama didn’t want anything going public!
Judicial Watch said those records belong to the American people—and that holding onto them breaks the law.
The Freedom of Information Act—or FOIA, for short—says the government has to reveal most documents about its proceedings to anyone who asks.
Obama rewarded Garland with a Supreme Court appointment that never came about—and Joe Biden has nominated him to become U.S. Attorney General, the nation’s top cop.
Even some left-wing groups have taken Biden to task for shutting the door on White House visitor logs. The Demand Progress Educational Fund, which is “left-leaning,” told Politico that Biden’s response was “insufficient to the moment and the need.”
But the Biden administration responded that a broken promise should be enough to shut the civil liberties crowd up.
“President Biden committed during the campaign to restoring ethics and transparency to government, and in his first weeks in office he’s taken significant steps to deliver on that, including by reinstating the daily press briefing, putting in place sweeping ethics guidelines for the administration, and pledging to regularly release visitor logs again,” spokesperson Mike Gwin said.
Of course, since most people are “visiting” the president through teleconference, there’s no log of their meetings, anyway.
But the team running the Biden White House wants to keep meeting people, in person and virtually, without you ever knowing anything about it.
As far as they’re concerned, what you don’t know won’t hurt them.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”