July 17 (UPI) — A government watchdog group will publicly release visitor logs of President Donald Trump‘s South Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, it announced Monday.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will turn over the identities of visitors to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Fla., and that CREW will make the records public.
The decision comes after litigation by the watchdog group in conjunction with the non-government organizations National Security Archive at George Washington University and Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute.
The three NGOs sued for release of visitor’s logs from the White House, Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower in Manhattan. The lawsuit regarding the White House is still pending. DHS has said it has no records of visitors to Trump Tower.
Trump has spent many weekends during his term as president at his Florida residence and has hosted national and world leaders there, including Chinese president Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Democrats in the Senate have proposed an act forcing Trump to release names of visitors to any location where presidential business is conducted.
“The public deserves to know who is coming to meet with the president and his staff. We are glad that as a result of this case, this information will become public for meetings at his personal residences, but it needs to be public for meetings at the White House as well,” commented Noah Bookbinder, CREW director, in a statement on Monday.
