State Department Says It Will Take 45 Years to Fulfill FOIA Request

Katie Zehnder, Townhall, June 18, 2018

According to a joint status report from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the State Department has informed Citizens United that they need 45 years to fulfill a FOIA request. 

The plaintiff, Citizens United, submitted a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request seeking: “All emails sent and received by former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland (from March 1, 2016 through January 25, 2017).”

The parties have reached some level of agreement concerning narrowing the scope of the request.  “State has informed Plaintiff that its search has uncovered approximately 104,629 potentially responsive documents.” 

Citizens United has agreed concerning terms narrowing the search, that the search can exclude "universe e-mails" as well as attachments which hit on "five key words." However, this agreement of terms has only narrowed the search to 9,000 documents. 

Read more here.