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The State Department said it would take 75 years for the release of emails from top aides to Hillary Clinton while she was serving as secretary of State. Lawyers said it would take that long to compile the 450,000 pages of records from former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Jacob Sullivan and Patrick Kennedy, according to a court filing from last week, which was first reported by CNN . "Given the Department's current [Freedom of Information Act] (FOIA) workload and the complexity of these documents, it can process about 500 pages a month, meaning it would take approximately 16-and-2/3 years to...

The state agency that has been criticized the most for mistakes and alleged deception in the Flint water crisis says it will take four months before it releases public records requested under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act. Generally, government agencies have no more than 15 days to respond to a FOIA request and release the relevant information. They may also require a reasonable fee to cover the cost of retrieving data and processing the request. Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality received a FOIA request from Michigan Capitol Confidential on March 30, took the maximum extension, requested a deposit, and cashed...

A former State Department IT expert has refused to answer questions about his work on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, keeping its operations shrouded in mystery. Bryan Pagliano’s laywers have said that he would remain silent during a deposition with the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, originally scheduled for Monday but now delayed until further notice. His decision increases the odds that Clinton herself will be forced to testify in the case. And, because of quirks of the legal system, his decision to stay quiet could be seen as an implicit confirmation that he or the State Department had done something...

Full title: Judicial Watch: Justice Department Documents Reveal Widespread Use of Fast and Furious Weapons by Major Mexican Drug Cartels – Linked to at least 69 Killings From December 2012 to March 2016, 94 Fast and Furious weapons were seized; Fast and Furious weapon found in “Chapo” Guzman hideout(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today released Justice Department documents showing that weapons sent from the U.S. into Mexico as part of the Obama administration’s Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning program have been widely used by major Mexican drug cartels. According to the new records, over the past three years, a...

Submits Proposed Witness List, Discovery Plan to Federal Court (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a proposed order for discovery with a federal court that seeks the testimony of Hillary Clinton about her use of non-state.gov email account(s) for official State Department business. Judicial Watch’s discovery plan also seeks the testimony of Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff; and Jacob “Jake” Sullivan, former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff, as well as other current and former State Department officials. Judicial Watch proposes the testimony take place over 12 weeks. Today’s filing comes in...

State Department Documents Reveal Clinton Political Operative Pushed the Hiring of Bryan Pagliano Whitewater: Twelve Versions of Hillary Clinton Draft Indictment, 451 Pages, Withheld By National Archives Hillary Clinton Knew Almost Immediately About Security Risk of Using Private Blackberry State Department Documents Reveal Clinton Political Operative Pushed the Hiring of Bryan Pagliano This week we received Department of State emails showing that, during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, Laura Pena, a top aide to Clinton, helped push through the political appointment of Bryan Pagliano, a former Hillary for President IT director, to a political position in the...

The State Department has been unable to locate any emails that were sent to or from Hillary Clinton's former IT aide at the department, according a Monday court filing. The statement was made by lawyers responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee. The party sued for applicable records after the department failed to respond to a FOIA request. Former IT aide Bryan Pagliano served at the department for nearly the entirety of Clinton's tenure from 2009-13. He was responsible for establishing a private server in the basement of Clinton's home, which was allegedly...

Third rebuke of administration’s transparency this yearThe White House showed “bad faith” in how it handled an open-records request for global warming data, a federal court ruled Monday, issuing yet another stinging rebuke to the administration for showing a lack of transparency. For President Obama, who vowed to run the most transparent government in U.S. history, Judge Amit P. Mehta’s ruling granting legal “discovery” in an open-records case — the third time this year a judge has ordered discovery — is an embarrassing black eye. In this most recent case, the Competitive Enterprise Institute was trying to force the White...

The State Department on Tuesday notified Vice News that it will not release documents responsive to the news outlet’s FOIA requests related to the security of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server until after the November election. According to Vice News reporter Jason Koebler, soon after news broke of Clinton’s use of a private e-mail for State Department business, he filed a FOIA request with the State Department seeking “communications, presentations, and procedures created by the State Department to secure Hillary Clinton’s email from electronic threats.” In his new report released on Thursday, Koebler describes how despite several promises from the State...

Judicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest Defending the First Amendment against the Obama IRS Only 3 U.S. Airports Require Employee Security Checks JW Gets Props in The Wall Street JournalJudicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest With a notorious Democrat in the White House, it bears repeating that there are corrupt politicians in both the Republican and Democrat parties. The “corruption caucus” in the political world is both bipartisan and growing. True to our non-partisan educational mission, we...

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was telling two different stories on the reason for the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya less than 24 hours after they occurred, according to newly released State Department documents. The documents, obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act court ruling, contain transcripts of telephone calls between Clinton and world leaders, including then Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil. According to the transcript, the call with Kandil was made on the morning of September 12, 2012, the day after the attacks that killed four Americans, including...

The Detroit News reported that the whistleblower who brought the Flint water crisis to light had earlier sent an email claiming that the city's response to the lead contamination of residents "borders on criminal neglect." The June 25, 2015, email from U.S. EPA employee Miguel Del Toral email read in part: "They have had no corrosion control treatment in place for over a year now and they have lead service lines. It’s just basic chemistry on lead solubility. You will have high lead leaching into the water where you are doing nothing to mitigate that.” “The only reason we don’t...

As U.S. officials dealt with the fallout of the government’s once-secret “Cuban Twitter” program, they had one thing on their side: notorious delays in the federal Freedom of Information Act. The government didn’t have copies of the documents, which formed the basis of an Associated Press investigation detailing a program on which taxpayers spent millions. But officials were worried that asking the contractor to hand over copies would risk making the details even more public. […] USAID’s calculus — realizing that the nation’s public-records law can be so slow as to border on unusable — comes amid new data showing...

Hillary Clinton is good at imagining partisan plots, and to listen to her team, no less than several inspectors general, the intelligence community, and the entire Republican ecosphere are colluding to turn her home-brew email system into a fake scandal. To this conspiracy, she must now add the federal judiciary...

A second federal judge has granted discovery to a watchdog group seeking records from Hillary Clinton’s State Department, an unusual move that gives new credibility to claims that State officials intentionally evaded public records laws. U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth issued the ruling on Tuesday in response to a 2014 lawsuit by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which has been suing the State Department for documents related to the Benghazi attack. Judge Lamberth cited “evidence of government wrong-doing” while issuing the decision. “[W]here there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as here, limited discovery is appropriate,...

Cites ‘Privacy’ and ‘Scintilla’ of Public Interest in Material about Potential Clinton Crimes Draft Indictment Bears on ‘Mrs. Clinton’s honesty, credibility, and trustworthiness … for the position she currently seeks.’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it is asking a federal court to order the National Archives and Records Administration to release draft criminal indictments of Hillary Clinton. In its motion for summary judgment, the National Archives claimed that “the drafts involve a significant [Clinton] privacy interest that is not outweighed by any public interest….” In its March 11 opposition brief, Judicial Watch counters that allegedly “making false...

The FBI submitted a classified declaration to a federal court judge late Friday explaining details about the bureau's "pending investigation" into the use of a private email server by Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The declaration addresses why the FBI can't publicly release any records about its probe in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by VICE News.

(Washington, DC) - Judicial Watch announced today that on June 15, 2015, it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to obtain records of all Secret Service expenses incurred to provide "security and or/other services" to former President Bill Clinton during his trips to the Caribbean island of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:15-cv-00915)).

Within hours of the news breaking that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private e-mail account while she was secretary of state, employees across the federal government fired up their computers to share their disbelief. “How is this even possible?” Michael McDonald, general counsel at the National Endowment for the Humanities, asked his deputy Lisette Voyatzis in an e-mail sent March 3, 2015. “They [the State Department] are as ass-backwards as NEH when it comes to records management. That’s comforting,” she replied. Charles Beamon, the top ethics official at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, sent Clinton’s story staff-wide as a cautionary...

The Michigan Freedom of Information Act provides a compelling declaration in favor of government transparency: “It is the public policy of this state that all persons … are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and public employees, consistent with this act. The people shall be informed so that they may fully participate in the democratic process.” CapCon Commentary CapCon Commentary The Flint water crisis has illuminated an important exemption found in FOIA; the law exempts the governor and lieutenant governor and their offices...