Despite Court Order, DHS Releases Names of Just 22 Mar-a-Lago Visitors

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security released only 22 names of visitors to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property — all associated with a Japanese government delegation — despite being ordered to make its full visitor list public after being sued for the data by ethics watchdog groups.

A judge ordered that the names of visitors to the Palm Beach, Florida club be released by noon on Friday, a deadline that already included a week’s extension. The names were given over “at the last minute,” said plaintiff Citizens for Responsibility in Ethics in Washington (CREW) via Twitter, nearly half an hour after the noon deadline had passed.

In a statement, CREW vowed to fight the government’s action in court, and said the government was “spitting in the eye of transparency.”

Image: Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago Image: Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago

Owner of the New England Patriots Robert Kraft, from left, First Lady Melania Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President Donald Trump, and Abe’s wife Akie Abe sit for dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Feb. 10, 2017. Nicholas Kamm / AFP – Getty Images, file

“The government does not believe that they need to release any further Mar-a-Lago visitor records,” said CREW. “We vehemently disagree. The government seriously misrepresented their intentions to both us and the court.”

In a letter, the government said the remaining records pertinent to this request “contain, reflect, or otherwise relate to the President’s schedules. The government believes that Presidential schedule information is not subject to FOIA.”

The 22 names that were released Friday were all from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s trip to the resort in February.

A Democratic super PAC says it knows the names of at least 1,100 visitors since inauguration.

Said Shripal Shah of American Bridge 21st Century, “When all is said and done the Trump administration will be remembered as the most corrupt and secretive administration in American history, based on public reports we’ve collected the names of over 1,100 Mar-a-Lago visitors since Trump took office.”

Visitors like New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, golfer Ernie Els, real estate tycoon Steve Wynn, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi were among visitors previously spotted by reporters during Trump’s past trips to the club.

The records affected by the court order cover visitors to the club from Inauguration Day to March 8th. Trump spent seven of his first fourteen weekends at Mar-a-Lago, triggering what cost and ethics concerns among experts and watchdog groups.

The club is not a just a presidential retreat, but a space where Trump has hosted foreign heads of state, including Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He has also golfed with undisclosed partners — an activity aides rarely confirm despite requests from White House reporters to know when he golfs and who joins him on the course.

But part of the impetus for the suit was to ensure that records were being kept — and if so, how.

The groups that sued the government for the logs — CREW, the National Security Archive (NSA) and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University — also sued for visitor records of Trump Tower and the White House. The lawsuit remains pending for the White House logs, but DHS maintains they have no records of visitors to Trump’s Fifth Avenue property.

The White House decided in April that it would keep its visitor logs secret, reversing an Obama-era precedent of releasing logs after CREW sued for them.

Though the Obama administration was praised for its transparency when it began releasing the logs in 2009, the records could be incomplete with names redacted for various reasons — a practice the Trump White House called out as “faux” transparency while the argued their own logs should be kept secret due to “grave national security risks and privacy concerns” of White House visitors.