Transparency Is Not Situational

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Wednesday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a DC non profit, announced it was suing the Secret Service over the Obama administration’s inexcusable refusal to publicly release White House visitor logs. The president was asked about his broken transparency promises last night, and made some pretty sorry excuses, explaining he had sent a letter to CREW with some of the names of insurance executives who had visited the White House. That’s totally missing the point, of course. The point is that White House visitor logs should be a matter of public record, especially now that The Most Transparent Administration In HistoryTM is in office. Over to CREW:

[T]ransparency is not situational. It is not sufficient for the White House to release certain visitor records shortly before a press conference to avoid distraction… Releasing some records because it is politically expedient to do so is not transparency.

This should be a no-brainer.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate