If Hillary Clinton thought the Associated Press was going to deal lightly with the scandal involving her use of a personal email account when she served as secretary of state, she was terribly mistaken.
The AP on Wednesday morning filed a lawsuit against the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act in an attempt to access the thousands of emails Clinton sent and received using a “homebrew” server she had set up in her home.
“After careful deliberation and exhausting our other options, the Associated Press is taking the necessary legal steps to gain access to these important documents, which will shed light on actions by the State Department and former Secretary Clinton, a presumptive 2016 presidential candidate, during some of the most significant issues of our time,” AP General Counsel Karen Kaiser said in a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner’s media desk.
The AP’s lawsuit comes after its multiple attempts to access Clinton’s emails under a Freedom of Information Act request have gone unanswered by federal authorities. The AP filed a FOIA in 2010 and others filed since 2013 are currently “pending.”
The lawsuit also comes after it was revealed Tuesday that Clinton deleted thousands of supposedly personal emails from her home server. The AP complaint seeks to obtain some of the 55,000 emails Clinton’s team agreed to hand over to the State Department after federal authorities demanded the transfer of the messages.
“The press is a proxy for the people, and AP will continue its pursuit of vital information that’s in the public interest through this action and future open records requests,” the news group’s statement read.
The AP lawsuit is suing for emails that detail correspondences between Clinton and her aides, information regarding the Osama bin Laden raid and for information on the National Security Agency’s many surveillance programs.
Elsewhere, the AP in a brutal fact-check dismantled almost every claim Clinton uttered in Tuesday’s press briefing on the email scandal.
“I fully complied with every rule I was governed by,” Clinton claimed in a presser that has drawn bipartisan criticism.
The AP responded to the claim: “At the very least, Clinton appears to have violated what the White House has called ‘very specific guidance’ that officials should use government email to conduct business.”
“Clinton provided no details about whether she had initially consulted with the department or other government officials before using the private email system. She did not answer several questions about whether she sought any clearances before she began relying exclusively on private emails for government business,” the AP fact-check reads.
The report explained the federal rules, adding that it seems clear Clinton did little to follow them.
“Federal officials are allowed to communicate on private email and are generally allowed to conduct government business in those exchanges, but that ability is constrained, both by federal regulations and by their supervisors,” the report, which goes on to dispute several of Clinton’s claims, stated.
“Federal law during Clinton’s tenure called for the archiving of such private email records when used for government work, but did not set out clear rules or punishments for violations until rules were tightened in November. In 2011, when Clinton was secretary, a cable from her office sent to all employees advised them to avoid conducting any official business on their private email accounts because of targeting by unspecified ‘online adversaries,’ ” it added.
For Clinton, the presumed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, the AP’s quest to obtain her State emails, as well as the brutal criticism her press briefing drew Tuesday, suggests that her road to the White House may be bumpier than she and her supporters originally anticipated.
Case No. 1.15-cv-345, Complaint (00816399)
