Tonight on Fox News’ Special Report, Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein will speak with Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen about recently uncovered government documents that reveal critical faults with the federal records archiving system during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.
Internal agency documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests submitted to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) show that as early as 2012, officials were concerned the State Department’s maintenance of Clinton’s official emails could be in violation of the Federal Records Act, yet they did nothing to prevent this breach of federal law.
The urgent need for permanent Inspector Generals at executive agencies has been recently highlighted by revelations that Clinton exclusively used a private email system for official government business.
Agencies are required to collect, retain, and preserve federal records, which provide the Administration, Congress, and the public with a history of public policy execution and its results. However, internal emails show that since 2009, NARA consistently identified problems with the State Department’s retention policy but failed to take any remedial actions to prevent the loss of critical records.
Knowing the deficiencies at State Department, internal meeting notes reveal that NARA, under the direction of then-acting IG James Springs, still failed to secure Clinton’s emails in July 2014 although it had the opportunity to do so.
Months later, emails show, NARA officers highlighted concern over an attempt made by the State Department to find a legal justification for their failure to adhere to record maintenance mandates.
Given NARA’s long-term knowledge of deficiencies with the State Department’s records system and its lost opportunity to fix the problem in 2014, the agency was either aware of the failure to preserve Clinton’s emails or was extremely negligent in overseeing the general preservation of senior officials’ emails.
Epstein Testifying Before Senate Committee
During Clinton’s entire tenure, the State Department’s acting IG was Harold Geisel. In 2013, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs sent letters to Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama noting that the “gap of more than 1,840 days is the longest vacancy of any of the 73 Inspector General positions across the federal government.”
On Wednesday June 3rd, Dan Epstein will appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee to discuss the critical need for permanent Inspector Generals within our nation’s federal agencies to serve as watchdogs and prevent this precise lack of oversight from happening again.
