But Obama has attended three super PAC events in the past week. Obama locks out the press — again

SAN FRANCISCO — President Barack Obama went to the West Coast to meet donors from two top Democratic super PACs, but the press wasn’t invited.

Tuesday, the reporters and photographers traveling with the president on Air Force One and in his motorcade were left on the gravel path not even within sight of former Costco CEO Jim Sinegal’s house in the Seattle suburbs where Obama sat for a Senate Majority PAC fundraiser with a $25,000 entrance fee.


Wednesday morning, when he met with big donors for the House Majority PAC at the Four Seasons hotel in downtown San Francisco, they weren’t even told what room or floor he was on.

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“We think these fundraisers ought to be open to at least some scrutiny, because the president’s participation in them is fundamentally public in nature,” said Christi Parsons, the new president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “Denying access to him in that setting undermines the public’s ability to independently monitor and see what its government is doing. It’s of special concern as these events and the donors they attract become more influential in the political process.”

Despite constant complaints from the press corps and promises from White House officials, access to the president continues to be limited. The constantly repeated line that they’re running the “most transparent administration in history” tends to prompt snickers. Halfway through Obama’s West Coast swing, it’s tipping toward outrage.

Tuesday morning, the WHCA complained after Obama celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing by hosting Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong’s widow in the Oval Office and allowing just a brief glimpse by a few select photographers.

Asked why the president couldn’t accommodate a little more open coverage, given the nature of the event, White House press secretary Josh Earnest demurred.

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“Not this time,” he said.

That’s after reporters only in the past week learned of a May 1 meeting Obama had with former President Bill Clinton, made public after the White House released official photos of the previously secret event. And a May 30 lunch with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been under wraps if not for an errant People Magazine tweet.

And it’s after a week in which Earnest cited the use of anonymous sources in attempts to deflect two reports — one from POLITICO about a spat with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley over where to send the unaccompanied minors from the border crisis, the other from The Washington Post asserting that the Obama administration knew about and ignored the border crisis for years. Reporters pressed Earnest at Monday’s briefing, noting that the White House routinely passes along information on terms of background or not for attribution.

The decision by Obama and his staff to take the secrecy approach to super PAC appearances has aggravated the concerns even further. This was, after all, the president who stepped away from State of the Union tradition in 2010 to directly attack the Supreme Court for the Citizens United ruling that helped spur the dramatic rise in campaign spending. (A separate federal court ruling paved the way for super PACs.) And Obama, even during his own 2012 reelection campaign, kept distance from the Priorities USA super PAC that was supporting him.

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But Obama has attended three super PAC events in the past week: one in New York last Thursday and the two on the West Coast.

How many people Obama met with was a secret. How much they paid to get in was a secret. Finding out who the people were? Forget it. Even a general account of what the president said to them? Not from this White House.

Parsons said the WHCA has asked the White House to reconsider its position regarding access, but has not yet filed a formal complaint.

All this as the White House, like previous administrations, looks for as much free media as it can get, sending the president out to lunch with people who’ve written him letters, and capitalizes on D.C. reporters’ Twitter excitement with unannounced stops at Starbucks and Chipotle.

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Yet limited access to the president at fundraisers is nothing new. Wednesday afternoon at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in Los Altos Hills, in Silicon Valley, reporters were invited into a backyard that included its own tennis court, pool and olive grove to hear Obama deliver almost entirely canned remarks about his record and the midterms.

Only as they were being rushed out did the president start to take questions — promising he’d alternate “girl-boy, girl-boy” once the “fourth estate” was gone. Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis, Obama’s recently returned ambassador to Hungary, kicked things off by asking him about the Russian reset and the situation in Ukraine.

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The president’s staff had reporters out of the way before he began to answer. Obama hasn’t spoken publicly about the foreign crises since leaving Washington on Tuesday aside from a glancing mention to them at a Seattle Democratic National Committee fundraiser Tuesday night during which he said they were adding to a sense of anxiety.

“I would only ask that you judge us by our record and the record of our predecessors. Without a doubt, I think we’ve done more to achieve the president’s commitment to transparency than any previous administration,” White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters on Air Force One Wednesday afternoon as the president flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Schultz cited the Obama White House’s efforts to open up some fundraisers at private homes as progress they can be proud of.

“That’s a change we implemented to give reporters more access than they’ve had before, and that’s a change we feel good about,” Schultz said.

Schultz referred questions about the decision to bar reporters altogether from the two super PAC events to the individual groups.

The Senate Majority PAC, which previously deflected reporters’ questions about the Tuesday event at Sinegal’s house, did not respond to request for comment.

A House Majority PAC source, speaking only on background, insisted the Four Seasons Hotel event “wasn’t really a fundraiser,” but didn’t say why reporters weren’t allowed inside.

“There were no tickets or cost of admission,” the source said. “The president appeared at the event only as a featured speaker and special guest, and was not asking for funds or donations. We invited a select group of HMP supporters to attend.”

There doesn’t appear to be any legal issue with Obama attending a super PAC event. Technically, so long as Obama is not making a hard ask above $5,200, he seems to be square within any restrictions by just showing up as a featured guest, letting the White House claim rights to keeping out press by saying there are no formal remarks.

Not that this puts many minds at ease.

“We don’t believe that federal officeholders can solicit money at super PAC events or for super PACs,” said Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21. “And officeholders in both parties are participating in a charade to make believe that they’re not raising unlimited contributions when they are.”

“The reality is that there’s no need for someone like President Obama, who is the featured guest at a super PAC event, to make an explicit ask at all,” said Paul S. Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center. “Simply being the featured guest at a super PAC event, in the Campaign Legal Center’s view, should not be permitted.”

The history of regular press access to presidential fundraisers dates back at least to the Clinton administration, when President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore found themselves embroiled in a controversy over DNC fundraising from foreigners. One closed-door event Gore attended took place at a Buddhist Temple in Southern California.

At some press-closed events, all or nearly all the donors spoke no English. It later emerged that many attendees at some events were noncitizens and that much of the money raised appeared to have originated abroad, particularly from China, Taiwan or Indonesia.

In order to quell the storm, the DNC returned about $3 million in donations and the White House and the Gore campaign began routinely opening fundraisers to press coverage.

Schultz said Obama stands by his opposition to the Citizens United decision and support of the DISCLOSE Act and even a constitutional amendment to limit the flow of money into politics.

But asked if participation in these events undercuts these principles, Schultz said no. Obama’s going to keep traveling the country to raise money for Democrats in the midterms as part of the commitment the White House made to the party earlier this year.

“The president’s policy positions are clear,” Schultz said. “He’s tried to do a lot on this, some unilaterally, but when Republicans block measures in Congress, he doesn’t feel like we’re going to allow the midterms to happen on an uneven playing field.”

That argument, Wertheimer said, is exactly the problem.

“The bottom line for us is that the president talked a big game when he was running for office in 2008 about fixing this system,” Wertheimer said. “And he hasn’t done anything about it — and continues to stay silent at a time when the system is a disaster for the American people.”

Dovere reported from San Francisco and Seattle; Gerstein reported from Washington.

Byron Tau contributed to this report.

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