State Department "Misled" Clinton Email Seekers

The top leadership of the State Department regularly botched open-records requests such as those for former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s emails, the department’s inspector general said in a report released Thursday that portrayed a staff who gave short shrift to its legal obligation to be transparent.

Department leaders ignored one request for Mrs. Clinton’s schedules “for several years,” and in another instance insisted it couldn’t find any records relating to Mrs. Clinton’s other emails — even though at the time, “dozens of senior officials” were aware of her unique email arrangement.

The inspector general said Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff at the time, Cheryl Mills, who knew about her email account and server she kept at her New York home, was made aware of the request for information, but didn’t take any steps to clear the matter up or reveal the email account.

Things are so bad that 177 requests for documents from Mrs. Clinton, who left office three years ago, are still pending, the inspector general said.

And even as requests for information increased, the inspector general said the State Department cut the number of people processing them — adding to what seemed to outsiders to be a veil of secrecy surrounding Mrs. Clinton’s activities at the department.

More here