Hillary Clinton Citizens United Schedules FOIA Lawsuit: Conservative Group Sues To See Candidate's State Department Itinerary

Hillary Clinton’s emails are not the only record of her time in the U.S. Department of State that people are requesting to see. Citizens United, the conservative organization best known for its Supreme Court case on campaign finance, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit Monday demanding to see Clinton’s schedules from her time as the nation’s top diplomat.

The group in March filed a FOIA request for the schedules with the State Department, according to Politico. But while the department said it would “expedite” the request, Citizens United has not received a response.

Some of Clinton’s schedules, and many scheduling-related documents, have been released in the monthly, court-ordered batches of emails from her private account that she used while serving as secretary of state. So far, about 37 percent of email pages in Clinton’s account have been released, and the dispatches are expected to continue through the start of 2016.

Citizens United, however, is seeking more specific records: those from Lona Valmoro and Linda Dewan, two of Clinton’s schedulers.

“When Citizens United filed this FOIA request back in March 2015, we didn’t anticipate subject matter as straight forward as Secretary Clinton’s schedule would take seven months and counting to produce,” Citizens United President David Bossie said Monday, according to Politico.

“We were encouraged when the State Department granted Citizens United expedited processing for this FOIA based on our status as a media entity. Unfortunately, this did nothing different to move the process forward in a more timely manner,” Bossie added. “The bottom line continues to be, you will likely not receive any public documents from the State Department unless you file a federal lawsuit and that’s what we've done today.”

Another conservative group, Judicial Watch, also filed a FOIA suit Friday that seeks records around training on how to mark documents as classified. That group is asking for records of whether Clinton, her former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and former deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin completed that training. The suit also seeks information on any employees who had their classification powers suspended for failing to complete the training.

Politico reported that Justice Department lawyers say the State Department is struggling to keep up with the FOIA lawsuits arising from the controversy of Clinton’s private email account. However, the long wait time for a response is not a new phenomenon for the State Department. Neither Politico nor the Associated Press received responses to FOIA requests about Clinton during the four years she was secretary of state.