Court rejects State Department foot dragging over Clinton e-mails
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A federal judge has rejected the U.S. Department of State’s request to delay release of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal emails. The court found that the State Department must periodically release her e-mails rather than release them as one large batch by January 15, 2016 as the State Department had requested. The Statement Department has one week to put together a schedule for releasing the more than 55,000 pages of e-mails.
On March 18, 2015, Friends of the Earth filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see Secretary Clinton’s private e-mails regarding the Keystone XL pipeline. On April 2, 2015, Friends of the Earth received a letter from the State Department stating that the agency intended to review the entire collection of emails, and to make as many of them as possible available on a government website for all parties. On April 29, 2015, Friends of the Earth filed a constructive denial appeal in response to the State Department’s refusal of the FOIA request.
Friends of the Earth Climate and Energy Program Director Ben Schreiber offered the following response:
We applaud the court for standing up for transparency and good government. The Keystone XL review process was ripe with undue corporate influence and the public deserves to know what role the Secretary of State played in that. Secretary Clinton’s actions continue to undermine the integrity of the Keystone XL decision-making process and the intent of the Freedom of Information Act. We requested the Keystone XL emails years ago and these documents should already be available to the public. Friends of the Earth continues to explore legal options to obtain this information before a decision is made to reject or approve the pipeline.
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Expert contact: Ben Schreiber, (202) 222-0757, [email protected]
Communications contact: Kate Colwell, (202) 222-0744, [email protected]