Secretary John Kerry’s appointee to lead the State Department’s handling of record requests, particularly Hillary Clinton’s emails, donated to the Clinton campaign.
Kerry named Janice Jacobs, former Ambassador to Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, as the "Transparency Coordinator" to oversee an improvement in the time documents related to FOIA requests are released.
Jacobs contributed the maximum amount, $2,700 to Clinton after she retired. The State Department says Jacobs never informed them of her donation, leaving Kerry in a peculiar situation.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar and Jake Tapper appeared confused by the incompatible positions of Clinton max-out donor and Clinton document reviewer.
Kerry insisted that the donation does not serve as a conflict of interest, despite the department already facing accusations of protecting the former secretary. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), the Benghazi Committee chairman, has grown increasingly frustrated with the State Department’s slow pace of turning over documents to the committee.
"I guess I just assumed that Secretary Kerry would care enough about his reputation that he wouldn’t waste his capital protecting his predecessor. But I have been dead wrong. We are having a very difficult time getting documents from the State Department and frankly their defense of her has been staggering."
U.S. Federal Court Judge Richard Leon blasted the State Department for its disorganized and slow reaction to Clinton’s emails. He ordered the department to release batches of emails to the public at the end of every month.
"I want to find out what's been going on over there. I should say, what's not been going on over there," Leon said over one month ago. "The State Department, for reasons known only to itself ... has been, to say the least, recalcitrant in responding."
Spokesman John Kirby stated the hiring of Jacobs was a "testament to a commitment to transparency."