Jill Kelley and Paula Broadwell, the two women at the center of the David Petraeus scandal, both visited the White House multiple times during the last four years. 

Kelley  has visited three times since September of this year, and Broadwell’s two visits were in 2009 and 2011,  a White House official told NBC News on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

Kelley’s trips were set up by a White House staffer she met at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., where she served as an unpaid social coordinator.

The staffer hosted Kelley and her twin sister, Natalie Khawam, for breakfast in the White House cafeteria, known as the mess, on Sept. 28 and again, for lunch, on Oct. 24. 

The third visit, on Sunday, Nov. 4, occurred just three days before Gen. Petraeus resigned as CIA director, citing an extramarital affair.  Kelley also took a tour of the White House that day with her husband, Scott, and their three children, as well as Khawam and her child. 

Broadwell visited the White House twice -- in June 2009, when she met with a National Security Staff member who handled Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, and in June 2011 when she attended a broad briefing on Afghanistan-Pakistan for approximately 20 guests, according to the White House official. 

The women have emerged as key figures in the scandal that cost Petraeus his job.

Numerous government and law enforcement officials have told NBC News that Kelley inadvertently triggered the investigation that revealed Petraeus' extramarital affair with Broadwell, his biographer, by complaining to an FBI agent she knew about a series of harassing emails she had received. Agents investigating the cyber-harassment case first determined that Broadwell was the author of the emails, then found evidence of her affair with Petraeus, the officials said.

More from Open Channel:

 

• New cartel drug smuggling trend: teenage couriers
• Feds fail to fight Medicaid fraud in home health-care services, report finds
• As their secret dissolved, Petraeus, Broadwell chatted at awards dinner
• Email to Gen. Allen warning about Kelley among those she gave to the FBI
• As FBI investigated Petraeus, he and Allen waded ino nasty child custody fight
• From suburb to basket case: How California city traveled the road to ruin
• Infidelity, intrique and politics: a timeline of the David Petraeus case
• Emails on 'comings and goings' of Petraeus, other officials alarmed FBI
• Petraeus probe began as cyber-harassment case, ended 4 days before election
• Lost to history: Missing war records block benefits for Iraq, Afghan vets

 

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The Washington Post has an excellent look at visits by lobbyists to senior officials in the Obama administration, based on White House visitor records. An excerpt:

More than any president before him, Obama pledged to change the political culture that has fueled the influence of lobbyists. He barred recent lobbyists from joining his administration and banned them from advisory boards throughout the executive branch. The president went so far as to forbid what had been staples of political interaction — federal employees could no longer accept free admission to receptions and conferences sponsored by lobbying groups.

"A lot of folks," Obama said last month, "see the amounts of money that are being spent and the special interests that dominate and the lobbyists that always have access, and they say to themselves, maybe I don’t count."

The White House visitor records make it clear that Obama’s senior officials are granting that access to some of K Street’s most influential representatives. In many cases, those lobbyists have long-standing connections to the president or his aides. Republican lobbyists coming to visit are rare, while Democratic lobbyists are common, whether they are representing corporate clients or liberal causes. 

Is lobbying greater under Obama than under his predecessors? It's impossible to know, because President Obama is the first president to release records of White House visitors. Score one for transparency, and score one for the lobbyists, too.

You may recall that msnbc.com covered the issue of White House visitor logs, pressing repeatedly for the White House to release all the records. That still hasn't happened. Records of visitors for the first eight months of the Obama presidency have not been released.

You can search for names of visitors

The Obama administration released records to settle a lawsuit, and another lawsuit is pending to try to force the White House to release all the records. The president's attorneys continue to make the claim, as previous administrations had made, that the records are not covered under the Freedom of Information Act, despite two federal court decisions calling for all the records to be released. So the disclosures made so far are, in the White House view, voluntary. Presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney has not said whether he will release White House visitor logs.

Stories in our msnbc.com series on the White House visitor logs:

• Obama blocks list of visitors to White House
• After lawsuit, Obama opens a bit of info on meetings with health care executives.
• Obama yields on most White House visitor logs
• Help figure out who has been lobbying Obama
• Obama names 110 White House visitors
• Obama is sued for White House visitor list