U.S. Secret Service records of visitors to the White House, except those pertaining to people visiting the president’s office, must be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, a federal appeals court ruled.
Congress didn’t want to impinge on executive branch authority by requiring disclosure of people who meet with the president in his office, Circuit Judge Merrick Garland wrote for a three-judge panel in Washington.
“In order to avoid substantial separation of powers questions, we conclude that Congress did not intend to authorize FOIA requesters to obtain indirectly from the Secret Service information that it had expressly barred requesters from obtaining directly from the president,” Garland wrote.
Records of visitors to most of the White House complex are agency records subject to FOIA, the court ruled. The court could have used disclosure exemptions in FOIA to protect the confidentiality of the most sensitive presidential meetings, instead of putting them completely out of reach of the open records law, said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, the Washington-based legal activist group that filed the suit leading to today’s ruling.
‘Held Accountable’
“A president who doesn’t want this information available is a president that doesn’t want to be held accountable,” Fitton said in a phone interview. “We’re considering an appeal.”
Brian Leary, a spokesman for the Secret Service, didn’t immediately respond to phone and e-mail requests for comment on the ruling.
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