Efforts to gain access to the government’s records of now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s visits to the White House and vice president’s residence took a new and curious turn recently when the Secret Service disclosed that it may have additional “Sensitive Security Records,” the existence of which it can neither confirm nor deny. The disclosure was made in a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch challenging the failure of the Secret Service to fulfill the group’s Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request for visitor logs of Mr. Abramoff’s White House visits. CREW also has a pending lawsuit for all visitor records of Mr. Abramoff and seven of his associates. 

The timeline of the Bush administration's tortuous tactics to avoid disclosing Abramoff's visits to the White House can be found here. [0]

Nearly 19 months ago the government claimed it had records of only two visits by Mr. Abramoff, an astonishing claim given the statements of various White House officials acknowledging Mr. Abramoff’s presence at the White House for multiple social events. Since that time the government has submitted over 20 declarations in the three pending lawsuits seeking access to various White House visitor records, two of which CREW has brought. Pieced together, those declarations document multiple instances of newly discovered records after prior searches that Secret Service officials claimed were comprehensive and complete. Also documented are the purportedly “inadvertent” destruction of records by the Secret Service and vastly differing practices as to what the Secret Service retained after it provided copies of visitor records to the White House. Moreover, on at least two occasions, the White House has entered agreements relating to these records that were kept secret, even while litigation over the records was pending, and not disclosed until months later.

Additional legal tactics employed by the Bush White House include an abrupt change of position by the government on the status of Secret Service records of White House visits. Last fall for the first time the government claimed these records are the exclusive domain of the White House and therefore not subject to the FOIA. CREW is challenging that claim as well.