Republicans expressed outrage Friday night after a report said the State Department will not be able to produce all of Hillary Clinton’s daily schedules during her time leading the State Department until well after Election Day.
The Associated Press reported that the department told the news organization’s attorneys that the schedule release — which shows with whom she met while serving as President Barack Obama’s top diplomat — will now last until around December 30.
Only half of the detailed schedules have been released so far, according to the AP, which reported earlier this week that a majority of the private citizens with whom Clinton met or spoke by phone during her tenure had donated to the Clinton Foundation.
“Hillary Clinton needs to end the stonewalling and either call for their release or release them herself,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. “Failure to exercise transparency will just further prove she isn’t concerned with telling voters the truth about her unethical behavior, a pattern that will continue if she is elected president.”
Donald Trump’s campaign bashed the news as the latest sign of her ties to the “rigged system.”
“Voters deserve to know the truth before they cast their ballots, but once again the rigged system is rushing to protect Hillary Clinton,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement. “Instead of counting on her friends in the Obama administration to shield her from accountability, Hillary Clinton should demand that these public records be released before voting begins.”
A federal judge ordered the schedules’ release in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Republicans have argued that Clinton’s conduct and ethics as secretary of state can be better judged with more detail on the types of people Clinton met with.
Clinton has denied any wrongdoing.
“My work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces. I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper earlier this week.
The State Department said it was proceeding as quickly as it could.
“Generally speaking, there has been a significant surge in FOIA requests to the State Department in recent years and we are working diligently to respond,” spokesman Elizabeth Trudeau told CNN Friday night, adding that the number of requests has tripled since 2008.
“We must assess our ability to respond to each FOIA request against our commitments in a large number of other FOIAs — many of which also relate to former Secretary Clinton,” Trudeau said.
