Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) is investigating reports that senior aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton interfered with public records requests.
Politico reports that Grassley sent a letter Friday to current Secretary of State John Kerry requesting information on claims that top Clinton staffers reviewed and in some case insisted on withholding information from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests:
"In the aggregate, the FOIA management dynamics at the State Department during Secretary Clinton's tenure is troubling," Grassley wrote in a letter sent Friday to Secretary of State John Kerry (and posted here). "As recent reports indicate, it appears the political concerns of senior agency staff are undermining the public's right to know under FOIA."
Grassley's letter referred to a Wall Street Journal report this week that cited anonymous sources claiming former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills insisted on reviewing all State records set for release relating to the Keystone pipeline and sought to block disclosure in some instances. A spokesman for Clinton's presidential campaign told the Journal that Mills "did not inappropriately interfere with the FOIA process."