Elections

Clinton Spokesman: Hillary Sought To Improve Transparency Compliance At State Dept. [VIDEO]

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign spokesman offered up some impressive spin this weekend when he claimed that the former secretary of state sought to improve the State Department’s compliance with public records requests while she was in office.

Brian Fallon, Clinton’s communications director, was asked by CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Saturday whether Clinton’s private email server and her decision to not turn over her State Department emails until well after she left office allowed her to skirt Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

And though numerous FOIA requests for Clinton’s emails and information about her email accounts were improperly denied by the State Department during and after her watch, Fallon claimed — without offering evidence — that Clinton pushed to improve FOIA compliance policies.

“Hillary Clinton herself during her time [at the State Department] sought to improve the department’s compliance policies to ensure that the department is operating in as transparent a manner as possible,” Fallon said.

Fallon, who served as former Attorney General Eric Holder’s spokesman at the Justice Department, did acknowledge that “there’s more that can be done to improve the FOIA compliance process.” He also pointed to a report “to that effect” released in January by the State Department inspector general. (RELATED: IG: State Dept. Gave ‘Inaccurate’ Response To Records Requests For Clinton Emails)

But what Fallon did not mention is that the inspector general report faulted the State Department for providing “inaccurate and incomplete” responses to FOIA requests for Clinton’s emails.

And in the case of a FOIA request filed in Dec. 2012 for information about Clinton’s email accounts, the request was denied by the State Department even though Clinton’s then-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was informed of it. Longtime Clinton aide Heather Samuelson was also made aware of the request, as was an attorney working for the department. Both Mills and Samuelson knew about Clinton’s private email system.

Fallon continued his impressive spin by telling Smerconish that Clinton’s emails were indeed available to FOIA requesters because they would have been captured in requests filed for the emails of State Department employees Clinton communicated with.

“Almost all of the threads and email exchanges that she was a part of involved aides at the State Department that she deliberately copied or forwarded messages to for the purposes of preserving those records for FOIA compliance,” the flack told Smerconish.

That claim, too, is undermined by the State Department’s responses to FOIA requests for Clinton aides’ emails. The agency denied requests filed in 2012 and 2013 by the website Gawker for emails from Clinton aides Philippe Reines and Huma Abedin. Gawker was forced to file suit last year after the full extent of Clinton’s private email account was revealed. The State Department has started turning over some of those emails and is processing others.

Fallon also dodged when asked whether it was true that emails Clinton sent from her personal account to others’ personal accounts would have not been captured on State Department systems.

“Well, there are disagreements about what constitutes a public record and government record,” Fallon said. “There are plenty of exchanges involving her and personal friends of hers or people that had served in her husband’s administration in the 1990s. A lot of it was personal interactions and exchanges and not something that would treated as a government record.”

One of those friends and former Bill Clinton aides was Sidney Blumenthal. He and Clinton frequently exchanged emails on their non-government email addresses. And their discussions were clearly work-related. Blumenthal often sent Clinton intelligence reports containing highly sensitive information about various world events. In some cases, Blumenthal’s memos contained classified information.

There is not yet smoking gun evidence that Clinton used a private server and personal email account to thwart FOIA. But one email obtained by The Daily Caller earlier this year does show that FOIA compliance issues were on the minds of State Department officials.

An Aug. 30, 2011 email shows a high-ranking career official offering to provide Clinton with a government email account. The account “would mask her identity,” wrote then-Executive Secretariat Stephen Mull. But it “would also be subject to FOIA requests,” he added. (RELATED: Clinton Aides Resisted State Dept. Suggestion That Hillary Use State.gov Email Account)

Huma Abedin, then Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, shot down the idea, writing that it “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

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