State Department Alerted Clinton Aide Cheryl Mills of CREW 'Significant FOIA' Request for Clinton Email Accounts -- IG Later Found 'No Records Response' Inaccurate and Incomplete
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10, 2016 /
Christian Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch today released
10 pages of new State Department records that include an email sent by State Department spokesman Brock Johnson alerting Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton's then Chief of Staff, that a "significant" Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request had been made for records showing the number of email accounts used by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The documents were produced under
court order in a March 2016, FOIA lawsuit against the State Department for all records "about the processing of a December 2012 FOIA request filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [CREW]" (
Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:16-cv-00574)). Earlier this year, the State Department Office of Inspector General concluded that the "no records response" sent in response to this request was "inaccurate and incomplete."
The documents show that at 4:11 p.m. on December 11, 2012, several State Department officials, including Brock and the Director of the Office of Correspondence and Records of the Executive Secretariat (S/ES-CRM) Clarence Finney were alerted of the request seeking Clinton's email addresses.
In an email exchange labeled "Significant FOIA Report" Brock alerts Mills about the FOIA request:
From: Johnson, Brock A
Sent: Tuesday, December 11 2012 05:39 PM
To: Mills, Cheryl D
Subject: FW: Significant FOIA Report
FYI on the attached FOIA request from:
• Anne Weismann of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) requesting "records sufficient to show the number of email accounts of or associated with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the extent to which those email accounts are identifiable as those of or associated with Secretary Clinton."
Mills later sends an email that acknowledges receipt and "thanks" Brock.
In January 2016 the State Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a
report titled "Evaluation of the Department of State's FOIA Processes for Requests Involving the Office of the Secretary," which highlighted systemic problems within the State Department's FOIA processing practices that led to "inaccurate and incomplete" responses to records requests:
In December 2012, the nonprofit organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a FOIA request to the Department seeking records "sufficient to show the number of email accounts of, or associated with, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the extent to which those email accounts are identifiable as those of or associated with Secretary Clinton." On May 10, 2013, IPS [Information Programs and Services] replied to CREW, stating that "no records responsive to your request were located."
