(PresidentialWire.com)- One of the biggest things former President Donald Trump was fighting to block from the House’s committee investing the events of January 6, 2021, were the visitor logs from his time in the White House.
He was unsuccessful at doing so. And now, the chair of the Select Committee in the House is saying that those logs are proving to be very beneficial to their investigation.
This week, Mississippi Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson alluded that the panel might have learned some key information via the documents that were recently released to them from the National Archives and Records Administration.
He classified the documents as “very fruitful.” Included in the visitor logs are details of people who entered the White House during Trump’s time there.
Trump had attempted to use executive privilege to block the committee from accessing those records. However, current President Joe Biden as well as White House counsel Dana Remus disagreed with the former president’s claim.
In a letter he sent to David Ferriero, the national archivist, in February, Remus wrote:
“The president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interest of the United States, and therefore is not justified, as to these records and portions of records.”
To back up that claim, Remus said that the Biden administration had been releasing White House visitor logs on a monthly basis, just as many other administrations of the past have.
Norman Eisen, who is an expert on government ethics, told Newsweek recently that the White House visitor logs are essential to the investigation the January 6 committee is conducting.
Between 2009 and 2011, Eisen served as the “ethics czar” for the White House, in addition to being a special assistant and special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform. From 2011 through 2014, he also served as the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic.
According to Eisen, these visitor logs contain a lot of information about each individual who had entered the White House during the Trump administration, including the purpose of their visit, who they visited with and they time they entered the White House.
As he explained:
“That is important, indeed central, to the committee’s inquiry because the single largest question looming over its work is the degree of culpability Donald Trump has for the insurrection.
“It can provide essential lengths in the mapping of any possible conspiracy involving him and others in the White House with those outside the White House. So, for those reasons, the visitor logs are indeed crucial.”
The White House visitor logs aren’t the only pieces of information the January 6 committee has received thus far. They’ve also received hundreds of pages of documents related to internal communications sent during Trump’s presidency.
The committee has also sought witness testimony from many of Trump’s closest advisers, including both former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former adviser Steve Bannon.
Both have refused to comply with subpoenas the committee issued.
