White House Visitor Log:Clooney, Oprah, Bill Ayers, Soros, Jeremiah Wright among W.H. visitors (Please pray for America)
Visitors logs released by the White House late Friday afternoon show that a host of prominent people have been spending time at the executive mansion, including liberal powerhouses George Soros and former vice president Al Gore.
Soros, the global financier and philanthropist, for example, visited the White House on Feb. 25 for a visit with Obama’s top economist, Larry Summers. Soros is one of the wealthiest investors in the world, and has become a controversial figure for his currency trading and for investing part of his vast fortune in liberal causes.
Gore, it appears from the logs, visited the Obama White House on April 8.
The White House warned prominently of false hits among the names. Names like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayres are on the list, but are not the same people who caused problems for Obama in the campaign. Michael Jordan is also on the list, but is not the one who is the former basketball star, the White House said.
Two prominent union leaders – Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO and Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union – each made multiple visits.
The list also includes some of the nation’s most famous celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney and Denzel Washington, who visited the White House residence in May.
The list is replete with the biggest names in finance, including Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein , Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and Vikram Pandit of Citigroup. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan also visited.
And Microsoft founder Bill Gates arrived on March 25 for a meeting in the Oval Office. Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer appears also to have put in time at the White House on separate occasions.
Also on the list are a mix of prominent Republicans like Newt Gingrich, civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, and media notables like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
The list was released in response to freedom of information requests from a variety of groups.
Norm Eisen, a special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, noted in a blog post that there were many names that appeared to be famous figures but were in fact other people with the same names.
“A lot of people visit the White House, up to 100,000 each month, with many of those folks coming to tour the buildings. Given this large amount of data, the records we are publishing today include a few “false positives” – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else. In September, requests were submitted for the names of some famous or controversial figures (for example Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly (”R. Kelly”), and Malik Shabazz). The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names.”
Read more at Politico
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