Judiciary chairman: State provided ‘false information’ about Clinton emails

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday ripped the State Department on the heels of a new report that criticizes its handling of requests for Hillary Clinton’s emails. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has tangled frequently with the department as well as Clinton aides, chided the State Department for its handling of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests

{mosads}“There are systemic failures at the agency ranging from actually searching for responsive emails, extensive delays in the amount of time it takes to fulfill a request, and failures to provide accurate and complete responses that don’t seem to be going away,” he said in a statement. 

The State Department’s watchdog in a Thursday report identified weaknesses in the agency’s leadership in overseeing the FOIA process, which has caused a range of troubles in many requests — including those involving former Secretary Clinton. 

The report pointed to examples of responses that were “inaccurate and incomplete” regarding Clinton’s email records and schedules.  

Grassley said FOIA officers at State were hobbled in their duties because they did not know that Clinton was exclusively using a personal email account while serving as the nation’s top diplomat. He said the knowledge gap caused them to provide “false information.” 

“These breakdowns are particularly troubling in light of the report’s revelation that former Secretary Clinton’s exclusive use of a non-government email server was known to senior staff at the department, but unknown to the FOIA office, thus causing the FOIA office to provide false information about the secretary’s use of email,” Grassley said.

In 2012, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked for records that would show the number of email accounts held by then-Secretary Clinton, inspired by revelations at the time that then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson had used a private email address and alias. 

While senior staffers at the department regularly corresponded with Clinton on her private account and her chief of staff was made aware of the request, the State Department replied that there were “no records responsive” to the query. The response to CREW came in May 2013 — three months after Clinton had left office. 

The details about Clinton’s private email server, and its use, would not be revealed publicly until 2015.

The IG’s report also lists problems in responding to requests by The Associated Press for Clinton’s schedules and other documents. 

In March 2015, the news organization eventually filed a lawsuit after years had gone by and it had not received responses to several different requests.

Senior State Department staff provided the department’s FOIA office — also known as the Office of Information Programs and Services — with the location of Clinton’s calendars, which had been “retired,” according to the IG report. 

The department disclosed in July that it had finally conducted a search of the records, turning up at least 4,440 pages that had been created by “various personnel in the Office of the Secretary.”

“State Department officials made sworn declarations to courts litigating State Department FOIA cases claiming that their searches were adequate to locate relevant records,” Grassley continued in his statement. “In light of this report, the department should explain to the courts and to the public why those inaccurate declarations were filed.”

Grassley’s office said the “inaccurate declarations” did not refer to any specific court filings, but rather a number of FOIA cases brought against the department. In these types of litigation, the government has to justify that the searches it completed were “reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents,” according to a Justice Department guide to FOIA.

“The report describes a systemic problem with search adequacy,” Grassley’s office said. 

The State Department declined to comment on Grassley’s accusations. Following the release of the IG report, it acknowledged that there had been problems in the past, but said it is committed to fixing them.

“The Department is committed to transparency, and the issues addressed in this report have the full attention of Secretary Kerry and the Department’s senior staff,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby in a statement. “We know we must continue to improve our FOIA responsiveness and are taking additional steps to do so.” 

In September, Kerry named Ambassador Janice Jacobs as a transparency coordinator, tasked with overseeing the department’s document preservation and transparency systems — not least of which included managing the release of the mass files of Clinton emails.

Grassley has gone after Clinton’s tenure at the helm of the State Department before, including trading barbs with her advisor at the time, Huma Abedin. 

He has taken issue with Abedin’s role as a “special government employee,” which allowed her the ability to work both at the State Department and as an outside consultant, at a firm called Teneo.  

The senator has asked the department’s inspector general to investigate whether emails between Clinton and Abedin to Teneo, or Teneo’s clients, had been “properly preserved,” given that Clinton used a private email server for official business during her tenure.

Grassley has also suggested that Abedin, who is now a top advisor to the Clinton presidential campaign, was illegally overpaid during vacations and while on maternity leave while at the State Department.

A lawyer for Abedin has accused Grassley of making “unfounded allegations” about her employment situation.

“No staffer — indeed, nobody at all — should be subject to such unfounded attacks based on ill-informed leaks, much less someone who has made countless personal sacrifices in distinguished service to the country she loves,” Abedin’s attorney, Miguel Rodriguez, wrote in a letter obtained in The New York Times.

– This post was updated at 5:22 p.m.