The Associated Press has announced that it will sue the State Department to force the release of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. The lawsuit comes as Clinton’s e-mail practices, including her exclusive use of a personal e-mail account run from a server in her home, have come into question.
“After careful deliberation and exhausting our other options, The Associated Press is taking the necessary legal steps to gain access to these important documents, which will shed light on actions by the State Department and former Secretary Clinton, a presumptive 2016 presidential candidate, during some of the most significant issues of our time,” the news wire’s general counsel said in statement.
The AP’s action comes after more than five years of stonewalling on several Freedom of Information Act requests to the department regarding Clinton’s correspondences during her tenure.
On Tuesday, Clinton faced reporters for the first time since news of her e-mail practices broke earlier this month. She said she had turned over half of her roughly 60,000 e-mails — the ones pertaining to official government business — to the State Department, and deleted the rest, which she said were personal in nature. The department is reviewing the e-mails – a process they’ve said will take several months – and plans to make them public upon completion of the review.