On behalf of the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, a federal judge ordered the State Department to turn over passenger manifests from 47 overseas trips made by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state.
The group filed a Freedom of Information Act request in July for flight logs and expense records of all of Clinton's official trips, and when the department failed to turn over the documents on time, the group filed a lawsuit in December. The group wants to examine flight records to see if Clinton Foundation donors had accompanied Clinton on official State Department trips.
Judge Gladys Kessler of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia told the State Department it must release the first batch by April 3. Subsequent batches must be released every two weeks, and all documents must be given to the group before Aug. 1, The New York Times reported.
"The American people have a right to know who accompanied Secretary Clinton on these trips," Citizens United president David Bossie said at the time of the filing, according to The Daily Caller. "Were there any big political contributors to previous or future Clinton campaigns on board? Were there any Clinton Foundation financial supporters on board?"
It was recently revealed that the Clinton Foundation received foreign donations while Clinton was secretary of state, leaving groups like Citizens United wondering if there was a conflict of interest.
"Clearly, the State Department is not getting the benefit of the doubt from judges anymore," Bossie told The New York Times following the ruling.
In all, the group has made 18 FOIA requests for related information, yet none have been fulfilled, and a new lawsuit is expected to be filed this week requesting documents that show correspondence between top State Department officials and Clinton Foundation donors, the Times reports.
Due to Clinton's exclusive use of a private email address and server while at the State Department, requests for her public records have become complicated, and most of these records might not be recoverable. Being that Clinton admitted that she unilaterally deleted 30,000 "personal" emails without oversight from an impartial third party, transparency advocates question whether any whitewashing occurred.
