This week, the GOP seemed to focus a little less on Hillary Clinton’s emails and a lot more on her schedule from her time as secretary of state.
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Also on Thursday, a judge ordered the State Department to begin releasing 14,900 deleted emails uncovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation by September 13, leaving plenty of time for their contents to effect the election.
“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. The GOP is hoping to find something untoward in the Clinton schedule while also painting her as untrustworthy.
Donald Trump’s campaign has seized on this as proof the election is part of a “rigged system”. “Voters deserve to know the truth before they cast their ballots”. “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”. According to media reports, some of the emails released this week showed that those who contributed with money to the Foundation, were trying to obtain concessions from senior officers of the former Secretary of State.
On Monday, State Department officials confirmed the existence of those emails to a separate federal judge, The Hill daily reported.
Clinton reiterated that has a deep conviction about the work done by the Clinton Foundation, created by her husband in 2001, and which is under the spotlight due to allegations that the foundation had privileged access to the State Department when she headed the federal agency between 2009 and 2013. “I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right”.
Fox’s Martha MacCallum pointed out that Clinton is yet to confirm whether she considered emails about the Clinton Foundation to be personal, and that she was yet to see “a single Foundation email produced by the State Department that was sent by her”.
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“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 on Friday night, adding that the number of requests has tripled since 2008.
