A Secret Service official is saying there are no logs saying who visiting President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, or as Trump affectionately refers to it, the “Winter White House.”
In response to a freedom of information act lawsuit, Special Agent Kim Campbell said the Secret Service only had sporadic records of some foreign dignitaries and officials who met with Trump at his Palm Beach resort, Politico reported.
At the White House, all visitors who speak with and interact with the president are recorded, but Campbell said no such process for tracking visitors exists at Mar-a-Lago, a property Trump has spent about 10 percent of his time since entering office, and conducted official meetings.
“The…search and review of records confirmed that there is no system for keeping track of Presidential visitors at Mar-a-Lago, as there is at the White House Complex,” Campbell wrote in her declaration that was filed with the courts in response to the FOIA lawsuit.
“Specifically, it was determined that there is no grouping, listing or set of records that would reflect Presidential visitors to Mar-a-Lago,” she added.
Government watchdog groups, the National Security Archive, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, filed the FOIA in April after they say the Secret Service refused to release logs of visitors at Trump properties.
“Given the many issues we have already seen in this White House with conflicts of interest, outside influence, and potential ethics violations, transparency is more important than ever, so we had no choice but to sue,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a government watchdog group in Washington said in a statement at the time.
Trump opponents have argued Trump’s private properties like Mar-a-Lago and his Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort offer the clubs’ wealthy members and their guests a unique opportunity to lobby to Trump on policy issues without transparency or disclosure.
A judge gave the Secret Service until Sept. 15 to hand over all relevant information in response to the FOIA.
