The State Department has been sitting for years on several Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Associated Press for records on Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, the AP reported Wednesday:
They include one request AP made four years ago and others pending for more than one year.
The agency already has missed deadlines it set for itself to turn over the material.
The State Department denied the AP's requests, and rejected the AP's subsequent appeals, to release the records sought quickly under a provision in the law reserved for journalists requesting federal records about especially newsworthy topics
The State Department is among the U.S. government's worst-performing federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act. There is no direct evidence that political considerations in a Democratic presidential administration have delayed the release of files about the party's leading contender for 2016. But the agency's delays, unusual even by government standards, have stoked perceptions about what could be taking so long.