This appears as though a payroll cost to hire these people could be in the range of $500,000. Send the bill to the Clinton Foundation.
(By the way, as you read below, Janice Jacobs was the woman who did the Lois Lerner, IRS emails)
Is it only me that wonders how come no one is talking about a search warrant or gathering the meta-data from Hillary’s Blackberry phone, her iPhone and her iPad? It is notable, all photos of Hillary communicating have been through portable devices and not on a laptop or desktop computer. Hello???
As the world turns in Washington DC, the State Department is spun out of control.
Exclusive: U.S. to shift 50 staff to boost office handling Clinton emails
The U.S. State Department plans to move about 50 workers into temporary jobs to bolster the office sifting through Hillary Clinton’s emails and grappling with a vast backlog of other requests for information to be declassified, officials said on Tuesday.
The move illustrates the huge administrative burden caused by Clinton’s decision to use a private email address for official communications as secretary of state and a judge’s ruling in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that they be released.
Clinton on Tuesday for the first time apologized for her use of private email, telling ABC News: “That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that.” The news channel reported the comment before broadcast of the full interview at 6:30 p.m. ET.
The extra staff will not work on the monthly, court-ordered release of Clinton emails, which are being handled by about 20 permanent, and 30 part-time, workers, officials said. The new staff will fill in for those workers and may also handle other Clinton FOIA requests.
The front-runner to be the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2016 election has been heavily criticized since it emerged in March that she used the private set-up rather than a government-issued email address.
In a notice to employees on Sept. 2, the State Department advertised for people with skills in coordinating and assessing FOIA requests and deciding if information may be declassified and released to the public.
The notice, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, is entitled “Enhancing Transparency: Immediate Detail Opportunities At State” and calls for workers to apply for reassignment for 9 to 12 months. Applications are due on Thursday and the agency plans to make selections by Sept. 18.
In addition to filling in for workers pulled from their normal duties to handle the crush of work from the Clinton emails, officials said the extra staff would help the department grapple with a surge in FOIA requests more generally, related litigation and a huge backlog of information requests.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he was naming Ambassador Janice Jacobs to serve as the State Department’s “transparency coordinator” to help the agency respond to FOIA and congressional requests more efficiently.
The agency had an overall backlog of 10,045 FOIA requests at the end of fiscal year 2014 on Sept. 30, up about 15.8 percent from the previous year, according to its FOIA reports.
There is more of course…..
Lawsuit asks how Clinton lawyer got OK to store classified emails
A new lawsuit is demanding that the State Department explain how Hillary Clinton’s private attorney, David Kendall, got permission from the State Department to retain copies of Clinton’s emails after the agency determined some of them were classified.
The suit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington by freelance journalist David Brown, who sent State a Freedom of Information Act request last month asking for all records about the decision to allow Kendall to retain a thumb drive containing copies of about 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to State in December.
Kendall said in a letter to Congress recently that on July 8, the State Department provided him and his law partner Katherine Turner with a safe to hold the drive. He said both he and Turner have “TOP SECRET” clearances.
After a request from the FBI to return all copies of the emails, Clinton instructed Kendall to give up the thumb drive, which he did in early August.
Lawyers who represent clients in national security cases say it’s highly unusual for a private attorney to be given permission to hold classified records.
“If one of us tried to do this, we’d have our clearance yanked that very day and have a search warrant served on us and something different happened here,” said Brown’s attorney Kel McClanahan. “Not only agree did [State] allow him to maintain these records, but it’s unclear if they even pushed back. … We decided somebody needs to get to the bottom of what exactly happened here. What is it: favoritism or did David Kendall somehow satisify some requirement that others of us never even knew to aim for?”
Kendall and the Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the case.
State agreed to “expedite” Brown’s FOIA request, but has not released any records about the agency’s decisionmaking on the issue, according to Brown’s complaint (posted here).
A State spokesman declined to comment, citing a policy of not commenting on ongoing litigation.
Brown’s work has appeared previously in the Atlantic and just Tuesday on the New York Times op-ed page. The former Army paratrooper is–under the pseudonym D.B. Grady–also the co-author with Marc Ambinder of a 2013 book on government secrecy, “Deep State.”
