Hillary Clinton turning over her work-related State Department emails — from her personal email account — 22 months after leaving office is an example of the Obama administration’s commitment to being the “most transparent administration ever,” White House press secretary Joshua Earnest said on Monday.
“I would encourage you take a look at the results which is that you have the former secretary of state releasing all of her work-related emails consistent with the FOIA process,” Earnest said, referring to the Freedom of Information Act.
“Again, I think the outcome here is evidence of the kind of commitment to transparency that the president has championed.”
Earnest made the baffling — if not laughable — statement in response to a question from a reporter about House Oversight Committee report finding that the FOIA process is “broken.”
The report comes a week after the Transactional Access Records Clearinghouse released a report noting that the Obama administration has had more FOIA lawsuits filed against it in 2015 — 498 in total — than any year in history.
Clinton’s actions, as well as those of Obama’s State Department, have contributed greatly to that case load. Because of Clinton’s use of a personal email account, the State Department has been named defendant in more than two dozen FOIA lawsuits, including two filed by The Daily Caller.
In using a personal email account, Clinton was able to skirt FOIA requests filed for her email records. Last week, the State Department’s inspector general found that the agency falsely claimed in response to one FOIA requester that it could find no records of email accounts that Clinton used while in office. State erroneously denied several other FOIA requests for Clinton’s emails and those of her top aides. (RELATED: State Department Gave ‘Inaccurate’ Response To Records Requests For Hillary’s Emails)
Just days into his first term in office, President Obama pledged to make his “the most transparent administration ever.”
With his comments, Earnest echoed a defense offered by Clinton and her presidential campaign. Clinton has claimed that she complied with federal regulations by turning over her work-related emails. What Clinton and the Obama administration avoid saying when they make that claim, however, is that Clinton only gave the State Department emails in Dec. 2014 after she was asked by the agency to hand them over.
In addition, Clinton did not release the email herself. The State Department has reviewed all 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton handed over and has released them in monthly installments, in accordance with a federal judge’s orders.
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