Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley made the following statement after the State Department Inspector General released an evaluation of the Department of State’s FOIA processes for requests involving the Office of the Secretary. The Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The committee held an oversight hearing last year. Statements and video of that hearing can be found here. Grassley has been conducting oversight of the State Department’s FOIA responses to requests for information regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure.
“The FOIA process at the State Department is broken, and has been for several years. The Inspector General confirms the same concerns that I raised last year during our annual FOIA oversight hearing. There are systemic failures at the agency ranging from actually searching for responsive emails, extensive delays in the amount of time it takes to fulfill a request, and failures to provide accurate and complete responses that don’t seem to be going away. These breakdowns are particularly troubling in light of the report’s revelation that former Secretary Clinton’s exclusive use of a non-government email server was known to senior staff at the department, but unknown to the FOIA office, thus causing the FOIA office to provide false information about the Secretary’s use of email. State Department officials made sworn declarations to courts litigating State Department FOIA cases claiming that their searches were adequate to locate relevant records. In light of this report, the department should explain to the courts and to the public why those inaccurate declarations were filed.”
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