It was a long wait.
Today’s blockbuster report from the Associated Press about Hillary Clinton’s meetings with Clinton Foundation donors during her time as Secretary of State contained the following nugget: “The AP sought Clinton’s calendar and schedules three years ago, but delays led the AP to sue the State Department last year in federal court for those materials and other records.”
Three years ago.
The long wait was in keeping with a practice of slow-walking such requests for information.
In April, the State Department explained the fact that Clinton ignored 237 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by saying that she was sitting Secretary of State at the time the requests were filed.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Clinton received 240 FOIA requests from 2009 to 2013 but only responded to three of them within the legally required timeframe. Among the organizations that filed unanswered requests were the AP, Gawker, Judicial Watch, Citizens United, and Vice News. Some of these groups subsequently sued the State Department for failing to respond to their requests for information from Clinton’s records.
The State Department attempted to justify its delays by claiming that the number and complexity of records requests continued to increase until it was impossible to process them. Of course, the effect of the slow processing was to make it impossible for the A.P. to do the report that rocked the political world this afternoon.