Trump White House Visitor Logs To Stay Secret; In Reversal From Obama, Trump WH Will Not Release Visitor Logs
BURNETT: Breaking news. The White House announcing tonight that it will be keeping its visitor logs private. That means very simply, we will not know who visits the White House. This is a total break from president. Athena Jones is OutFront. And Athena, why? This is a drastic change from the Obama Administration.</s>JONES: It is and Communications Director Michael Dubke explain -- try to explain why they're making this move siting "grave national security risks and privacy concerns." Now, it's not entirely clear what grave national security risks would be involved with the release of this kind of visitor information but I can tell you that during the Obama Administration, sensitive meetings like with the potential Supreme Court justice or with top national security officials were scrubbed from the records before they were released. This is a move that the Trump White House apparently doesn't want to take. Now, this new is prompting criticism from both political parties. People who are concerned the White House is trying to hide this information, hide information about who was come to meet the president, who was influencing the president and shaping his policy. The group CREW citizens were responsible in ethic in Washington is blasting Trump promise to -- promising to "drain the swamp and then taking what they call a massive step away from transparency with this move." CREW is among several watch dog groups that are suing the Trump Administration over this issue. Erin?</s>BURNETT: All right. Athena, thank you very much. And OutFront now, former senior communications advisor for the Trump Campaign and former communications director for the transition team, Jason Miller, former advisor to four presidents including Nixon and Clinton, David Gergen, and former Clinton White House Aide Keith Boykin. David, let me start with you. Because of no visitor logs for the Obama White House, can you just -- can you give a specific example that I think is very germane. We know that the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak visited the Barack Obama White House at least 21 times. So without logs, we would not know that, we certainly will not know if Trump meets with someone like that who of course is now so central to the Russian collusion investigation, right?</s>DAVID GERGEN, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: That's absolutely true. I do think couplings need to be kept in perspective, one is this is entire -- acting entirely within their legal right as the White House.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>GERGEN: And, secondly, it is -- before President Obama, there was a lot of withholding of this information. You may remember when Hillary Clinton was putting together her health care proposal, the Clinton White House put clamps on what names were released. And when the Bush -- George W. Bush White House, when Dick Cheney had his energy task force, they were very tough about releasing any names, even though they have a lot of people from the industry at the table helping to write the plan. So, there is precedent. But President Obama voluntarily decided to go forward with released some six million documents or pages of logs. And I think that there is -- it established a new commitment to transparency and to accountability that has now become sort of the norm for government. And so, what the -- the Trump White House is acting legally but I think unwisely, especially given his record of secrecy starting with tax returns, going on to his golf game, for goodness sakes and now the visitor logs.</s>BURNETT: So, Jason, you know, this is something important, though, because Barack Obama was the one who started this. I think as David rightly points out, it is now the expectation that these logs be public. But President Trump repeatedly slammed Obama for transparency specifically. Let me play it for you, Jason.</s>TRUMP: President Obama is the least transparent president in the history of this country.</s>DAVID LETTERMAN, TV HOST: Why do we want to see President Obama's college records?</s>TRUMP: Transparency. Does that make any sense to anybody?</s>LETTERMAN: No.</s>TRUMP: Seriously, transparency.</s>LETTERMAN: What does that mean transparency?</s>TRUMP: It means there are so many things we don't know about our president. There's a total lack of transparency. This is a very, very sad day for the United States of America.</s>BURNETT: It's his even words, Jason. I mean, he sure sounds like a hypocrite.</s>JASON MILLER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I got to set the record straight on a couple of things. I mean, first and foremost, this is a return to how it was set up during both the Clinton White House and the Bush White House. And with regard to the Obama administration, let's keep in mind that they redacted a whole heck of a lot of names that we were really never given clear reasons on to why they were redacted or why they weren't. But there's the fact of the matter is, that there are security issues, are issues about who's coming in to meet with the president. Need to be able to do some of those in private. And the other --</s>BURNETT: So just redact those names. You just it yourself, right?</s>MILLER: No, but I think that -- look, it's never going to stop. We don't want to scare people from being able to come into the White House. I think the other thing, too, is I think it's hypocritical for these groups to attack the Trump administration. Why aren't they filing the similar type lawsuits against Congress? I don't see any calls to find out who each member of Congress has met with.</s>KEITH BOYKIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Jason -- Jason -- Jason --</s>MILLER: This is completely overblown. This is totally hypocritical on their end. Absolutely hypocritical.</s>BOYKIN: Jason, I feel sorry for you to have to defend the indefensible once again. This is hypocritical on the part of President Trump. It's hypocritical on the part of the Republicans. I worked in the Clinton White House. I remember when people in the Republican party were attacking Hillary Clinton, attacking them about the people who were meeting with Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. And now, for Republicans to come into office to have control over the entire government and have a president who has not released his tax returns, a president who has not divested from his business, who hasn't set up a blind trust, who won't release the visitor logs and to use your excuse to say, that's what Bill Clinton did, I thought this guy was supposed to change things and drain the swamp.</s>BOYKIN: He's creating the swamp.</s>MILLER: No. That's -- I'm glad you brought up this point. When you talk about what President Trump is doing putting the five-year ban on administration officials coming out --</s>BOYKIN: Don't change the topic now.</s>MILLER: No.</s>BURNETT: Hold on, both of you hold on a second. It's a fair point but I want to follow up on one point, Jason, because Keith and David both mentioned the Clinton administration. You really benefitted from logs, Jason.</s>BOYKIN: Thank you.</s>BURNETT: Last summer, the State Department calendars released to the "A.P." showed more than half the people outside of the government that met with Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, gave money to the Clinton Foundation. You remember that. You guys were touting that you were thrilled to have that information, right? It was pay to play, that's how you guys said at the time. So, aren't you glad about those visitor logs, right? You benefitted from them.</s>MILLER: I think the administration has made it very clear what the issue is here. It's security. We need to I think tamp down some of this apoplexy coming out from the press corps this evening. I think when you look at the what president is doing on draining the swamp --</s>BOYKIN: What is the situation, Jason? What's the issue? How is it that the Obama administration was able to release six million names? What's the security issue?</s>MILLER: But again, the Obama administration was redacting names left and right.</s>BOYKIN: It's not a national security meeting. There are a lot of people whose names can be released.</s>MILLER: You're going to say right now that every name that was redacted during the administration was purely for national security --</s>BOYKIN: I did not say that.</s>MILLER: That's what I'm asking.</s>BOYKIN: You're going from six million to zero.</s>BURNETT: Let me get David in here as the person who's been there through, by the way, some pretty shady administration. We're talking about Nixon, right? Do you buy this national security at all?</s>GERGEN: It's total</s>B.S. BURNETT: There you go.</s>GERGEN: You can run this in a very -- you can regulate this. If you've got some -- as the Obama administration, which did, I have six millions it did redact some of them. That when they were important security conversations, but that's so rare. It has so little to do with this. And by the way, as national security really was threatened when Congressman Nunes went in? Wasn't it helpful at the end of the day what he was doing in this? I think it was. I want to go back to one thing that's very important for this conversation. This is not a left-right issue. The organization that's been really on the front line for a long time, trying to get more transparency, trying to sue to get these logs out is Judicial Watch. That's a conservative group. They're trying to set on both sides of the aisle, standards of transparency and accountability. If the president wants to float those standards and norms, he's within his rights. But then voters are within their rights to make judgments about his secrecy and how much truth they're getting out of the White House.</s>BURNETT: All right. Well, I appreciate all three of your time tonight. There's a lot more to talk about and lime glad that we've started. That was fruitful. Thank you. And next, one of the president's most trusted advisors moving up in the power list. He's a Democrat. So, how is this going over with Trump supporters? And the Syrian president -- is anyone buying his unbelievable story that all of this fake video?