The Republican National Committee has opened two new lawsuits against the State Department in pursuit of records written by top aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, less than two weeks after the agency released its final batch of Clinton emails.
“For too long the State Department has undermined the public and the media’s legitimate right to records under the Freedom of Information Act, and it’s time it complies with the law,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Wednesday. “If this administration claims to be the ‘most transparent in history,’ and Clinton the ‘most transparent person in public life,’ then they should prove it, release these records, and allow the American people to hold her accountable.”
The RNC filed the FOIA requests in October and December of last year, but never received a response from the State Department.
The first request sought records sent and received by former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, former director of policy planning Jake Sullivan, and undersecretary for management Patrick Kennedy. The request also sought records written by Bryan Pagliano, the embattled IT assistant who was recently granted immunity by the Justice Department in connection with an FBI investigation into the server arrangement he reportedly helped construct.
The RNC’s first lawsuit focuses on the information it was seeking in that first FOIA request. The RNC’s second lawsuit focuses on a FOIA request that asked for records sent between State Department aides and staff on Clinton’s campaign and “other allied entities.”
FOIA lawsuits have forced the State Department to produce thousands of documents related to Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, including all 30,000 of her private emails and portions of her professional schedules.
The RNC’s lawsuits came one day after Clinton suffered a surprising defeat in Michigan’s Democratic primary, where she was expected to beat rival Bernie Sanders handily.
