State Department officials are using the recent spate of Hillary Clinton controversies to shield the agency from having to turn over documents in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Although the National Security Archives filed its FOIA request in 2001, State Department officials asked a federal court Friday for a six-month extension of the deadline to produce the documents because “a significant portion of [State’s] FOIA-processing resources are currently devoted to reviewing for public release the collection of approximately 55,000 pages of emails that were recently provided to State by former Secretary Hillary Clinton…and to making those documents available to the public by posting them on a department website.”
The State Department has been hit with “an over 100 percent increase in FOIA lawsuits compared to the same time period last fiscal year,” according to court documents. The agency is presently fighting 79 different FOIA lawsuits.
The National Security Archives is seeking phone records from Henry Kissinger’s tenure as secretary of state. The group filed a lawsuit in March after the State Department stonewalled its request for more than a decade.
Tom Blanton, director of the George Washington University-based archives, said the State Department released thousands of transcripts from Kissinger’s phone records but has withheld the final 700 documents since 2007.
State officials cited a “surge” of “increasingly burdensome and complex” FOIA lawsuits as a reason why they needed an additional six months to produce Kissinger’s phone records.
“The government always asks for more time, but what’s outrageous is that it’s already been more than seven years,” Blanton said. “To say, ‘Oops this new burden means we can’t get to your old request,’ is pretty outrageous.”
Judicial Watch estimates there are 18 cases presently pending in court that are directly related to the email controversy.
Amid a cabinet of unresponsive agencies, the State Department is consistently ranked as the worst at handling FOIA requests. A March study by the Center for Effective Government found its “particularly dismal” compliance with open records laws was “completely out of line with any other agency’s performance.”
Hillary Clinton submitted 55,000 pages of emails in November of last year after the agency pressed her for records she should have already provided it.
The presidential candidate faced a barrage of criticism after media reports indicated she relied on a private email address and server to conduct all of her affairs while secretary of state, leading some to question whether the practice broke open records laws.
