The State Department’s In-Kind Contribution to the Clinton Campaign

Yesterday’s revelation that the State Department is processing (read: stonewalling) 50,000 emails from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton but that none of those emails will be ready for public consumption until sometime in January 2016 is unsurprising.

Those emails cover everything from the Benghazi disaster to numerous foreign policy failures.

The State Department is taking a page directly from the IRS’s playbook.

First, you destroy incriminating emails, but don’t tell anyone.  Former Top IRS official Lois Lerner and the IRS perfected this as thousands of her emails mysteriously disappeared.  Clinton played that part well, destroying emails on her own private server instead of using the government server, while State Department staffers blocked attempts by the public to obtain public information.

Second, you wait years until the public discovers what you done.

Third, you deny anything happened to the emails.

Fourth, you cover up.

When that is no longer feasible, you delay, stonewall, obfuscate, and otherwise drag out the process of turning over said emails.

The IRS has been doing this for years, giving excuse after excuse for why it cannot turn over Lois Lerner’s and other’s emails to congressional investigators and public watchdog groups alike.

More than two years into the IRS scandal, we still don’t have all of Lois Lerner’s emails.

The State Department is attempting the same ridiculous tactics with Hillary Clinton’s emails.

But is it any surprise that another bureaucratic federal agency would provide an assist to its friends on the left.

As ACLJ Chief Counsel and Bestselling author Jay Sekulow describes in his new book, “Undemocratic,” this is more of the same and what we can continue to expect from an out-of-control federal bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy is so corrupt and entrenched in the dogma of the Left that it doesn’t need a direct order from on high to carry out the Left’s radical agenda, and even more so hide the truth about scandal after scandal.  It doesn’t need a direct order from President Obama to target conservatives.  It doesn’t need a direct order to protect Hilary Clinton’s emails.

In fact, the bureaucracy is so on the take that Hillary Clinton can publicly call for the speedy release of those emails with no fear that the State Department would dare do so.  (Of course anyone who thinks Clinton actually wants those emails released should just ask her why she chose to hide them on a private server and then delete them in the first place.)

The State Department is doing the same kind of dirty work for Hillary Clinton that the IRS had done for Lois Lerner.

Which brings me to my next question.  Should the State Department be required to report its in-kind contribution to the Clinton campaign?

Federal regulations and the FEC define “in-kind contributions” as

• Goods and services offered free of charge;
• Goods and services offered at less than the usual and normal charge (but discounts are not contributions if they are offered in the ordinary course of business to both political and nonpolitical clients); and
• Payments by a third party for goods and services rendered to a candidate or political committee

The State Department is providing considerable services for Clinton, withholding information from the pubic, delaying email production, handling press questions, and defending those actions in ongoing litigation to name just a few.

Of course, the FEC is the agency that urged Lerner to work with the Justice Department to “piece together” criminal charges against patriotic Americans.  It is not above the bureaucratic fray.

Yet yesterday, the State Department’s perfect plan ran into a problem: a federal court.

As ABC News reports:

A federal judge has rejected the State Department’s proposal to wait until January 2016 to release over 50,000 emails written by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ordering instead a “rolling production” of documents every two months.

In response to Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit filed by Vice News, the State Department on Monday had filed a declaration with Washington D.C.’s U.S. District Court arguing that the process of reviewing the emails is so arduous and time-consuming that it should have until January, 15 2016 to release them.

Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled against that request today, ordering instead that the department has until May 26 to produce a new production schedule for the releasing Clinton’s emails.

If past is prologue, the State Department will find a way to further delay or cherry pick which emails it releases, as the IRS has successfully done.

This permanent partisan “fourth branch” of the federal government will continue to usurp our freedoms and promote and protect the agenda of the Left form high atop their DC seat of power unless and until the American public take a stand.

Matthew Clark is Senior Counsel for Digital Advocacy with the ACLJ. A lifelong citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia, he lives with his wife and four children in Northern Virginia. Follow Matthew Clark: @_MatthewClark.

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