Democrats' 'MAR-A-LAGO Act' Would Require Trump To Disclose Visitors To Florida Resort

At the so-called “Winter White House,” President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the former reality TV star hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and would soon welcome Chinese president Xi Jinping. But some of the hotel’s visitors, like Republican campaign funding juggernaut David Koch, have been a bit less visible to the public.

Democrats in the House and Senate pushed to change that Friday, unveiling twin bills requiring the White House to publish visitor logs—not only at the official White House, but at Trump’s other frequent meeting places in New York and New Jersey, as well.

In their announcement of the Make Access Records Available to Lead American Government Openness Act, or MAR-A-LAGO Act for short, Democrats criticized “the Trump administration’s refusal to extend the pro-transparency policy established by former President Barack Obama to release visitor logs at the White House 90 to 120 days after they were created.” In addition to Mar-a-Lago, the bill also expanded the scope of desired visitor logs to Trump Tower in New York City and the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.

Read: President’s Mar-a-Lago Visits May Force Florida County To Increase Taxes

The Senate version of the bill counted Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) as sponsors, while Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) introduced its House counterpart.

“President Trump has taken the unusual and potentially dangerous step of conducting official business in the plain view of guests at his high-priced Mar-a-Lago club,” a press statement for the pieces of legislation read, adding that in February, Udall and Whitehouse had written to Trump “demanding information about who is buying access to what President Trump calls the ‘Winter White House.’”

Read: Trump May Host China’s Xi Jinping At ‘Southern White House’

A White House webpage titled “Visitor Access Records” says the page “is being updated” and “will post records of White House visitors on an ongoing basis, once they become available.”

While Obama released his administration’s visitor logs late in the first year of his presidency—records are available on his White House archives website—they came only after the public interest group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the White House, which had taken advantage of a legal loophole allowing “particularly sensitive” information to remain secret.