Conservative group Citizens United filed its third lawsuit in less than two weeks against the State Department on Thursday, demanding access to the travel manifests of Kris Balderston, another top aide to then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton whom the group believes inappropriately coordinated with Clinton Foundation donors.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., also seeks e-mails between the founders of Clinton-connected consulting firm Teneo and top State Department officials, as well as the contents of two mass e-mail lists used by officials close to Mrs. Clinton.

While investigators have long focused on the nexus between Teneo and the State Department, Citizens United is now zeroing in on Balderston’s ties to the Clinton Foundation. They see Balderston as the latest in a slew of State Department officials suspected of acting as intermediaries between the federal bureaucracy and Clinton Foundation donors seeking special favors.

Balderston, who has served both Clintons in various capacities over the past two decades, was tapped by Secretary Clinton in 2009 to run the State Department’s new Global Partnership Initiative, described as “the entry point for collaboration between the U.S. Department of State, the public and private sectors, and civil society.”

#share#Citizens United president David Bossie calls that position “a donor-maintenance job inside the State Department,” pointing to reports that Balderston sought a joint initiative between the State Department and the Rockefeller Foundation, a Teneo client and key Clinton Foundation donor, in November of 2012. Bossie believes Balderston acted as liaison between the department and other Clinton Foundation donors during six overseas trips to major international conferences that same year. His group is seeking the longtime Clinton confidant’s travel manifests, as well as the list of attendees and the agenda for each of the conferences, to determine whether any Foundation donors travelled with him or were present at the meetings he attended.

#related#According to Bossie, the public records sought in Thursday’s lawsuit could figure heavily in the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s private e-mail server, which was recently expanded to include “the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts, and whether regular processes were followed” in addition to its original focus on Clinton’s handling of classified material. The records could show whether Balderston improperly obtained private contracts for Foundation donors by promising access to Clinton.

Bossie says that the group’s recent flurry of lawsuits underscores the election-year urgency behind its efforts to probe the Clintons’ byzantine network of public and private interests.

“These [public-records requests], and then the subsequent litigation, are really the only tools we have to conduct an investigation. It’s only a few of us out here doing the work that is necessary to try to uncover this before it’s too late.”

— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.