A veterans group that filed a Freedom of Information Act request for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal and work emails in July 2014 is preparing a lawsuit against the State Department for refusing to respond to the request after more than seven months.
Joel Arends, chairman of Veterans for a Strong America, said his group specifically requested Clinton’s personal emails from a specific time period before and after the Benghazi terror attack in case Clinton had also sent some relevant emails using her personal account during that time.
Arends said he was unaware at the time of the request that Clinton had relied exclusively on a private email account using a server located at her New York private residence.
“At this point in time, I think we’re the only ones that specifically asked for both her personal and government email and phone logs,” Arends said of his group’s Benghazi-related request.
Veterans for a Strong America filed the FOIA request in the course of writing a book, “The Difference it Makes,” about the government’s handling of the Benghazi attack.
The group has tapped Mark Zaid, a noted national security and FOIA attorney, to represent them in the suit against the State Department.
“We chose Mark because he has a distinguished history,” Arends said.
Zaid rose to prominence for his role in several high-profile cases, including a legal victory against the government of Libya for the 1988 terrorist bombing of a Pan Am flight that netted a nearly $3 billion settlement.
Zaid told the Washington Examiner that the agency’s failure to answer the FOIA request in the more than seven months since Veterans for a Strong America filed it is fairly common for such requests.
“I’ve had cases where agencies haven’t responded for years,” Zaid said. “That amount of time would be typical for processing, so from a legal standpoint, it wasn’t raising any red flags.”
What makes this case “unique” is the fact that the court will have to determine whether personal emails sent from a personal server are also subject to FOIA requests, he said.
Arends said his group also requested Clinton’s phone records in its July 2014 request. He said he is aware of several similar FOIA requests that the State Department has ignored in recent months.
Zaid told the Examiner the group has filed another FOIA request “to capture new info that has come to light” about Clinton’s communications while at the State Department.
