- Trump spent seven weekends at his Palm Beach, Florida resort between late January and mid-April
- Three government-transparency activist groups sued the U.S. Secret Service for records showing who visited the president there
- But the agency says it didn’t keep track, and doesn’t have any records showing it
- Secret Service does have copies of Trump’s meeting schedules, but those are covered by the Presidential Records Act, meaning they don’t control them
The U.S. Secret Service carefully monitors the comings and goings of White House visitors, but hasn’t been tracking who sees Donald Trump at his ‘Winter White House’
The identities of the president’s guests at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida has been a mystery, and led three government-transparency groups to file a lawsuit under the Freedom Of Information Act.
But on Wednesday the Secret Service confirmed to a federal judge that the records the plaintiffs sought don’t exist.
President Donald Trump has spent seven weekend this year at his sumptuous Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, but the U.S. Secret Service says it has no records of who was admitted to the property to meet with him
Trump and the first lady met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan at Mar-a-Lago on April 6
‘The Secret Service maintains no record and has no access to any record directly responsive to Plaintiffs’ request,’ an agent wrote in a sworn declaration obtained by Politico.
‘The…search and review of records confirmed that there is no system for keeping track of Presidential visitors at Mar-a-Lago, as there is at the White House Complex,’ wrote Kim E. Campbell, head of the Secret Service’s Liaison Division.
‘Specifically, it was determined that there is no grouping, listing or set of records that would reflect Presidential visitors to Mar-a-Lago.’
The National Security Archive, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed the lawsuit.
Trump spent seven separate weekends at Mar-a-Lago between his inauguration and mid-April, holding meetings with White House staff and world leaders.
The resort is also host to a wide variety of charity events, including some when the president is on the property.
Last month the White House responded to a judge’s mid-September deadline for releasing visitor records by handing over a single page listing Japanese officials who took part in a February visit by Prime Minister Shinzō Abe.
The Secret Service confirmed Wednesday that it does possess some information about Trump’s meeting schedules during his Mar-a-Lago weekends – which might be functionally equivalent to visitor logs that the White House maintains.
But those fall under the Presidential Records Act, the agency contends, meaning the Secret Service doesn’t own or control them.