Trade is a hot issue in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign 
yet the State
Department is protecting Hillary Clinton’s TPP emails until after the election.
Hillary Clinton and her
top State Department aides about a controversial 12-nation trade deal will not
be available …again Hillary skates from the truth.
The decision came in
response to International
Business Times' open records request for
correspondence between Clinton’s State Department office and the United States
Trade Representative. The request, which was submitted in July 2015,
specifically asked for all such correspondence that made reference to the TPP.
The State Department
originally said it estimated
the request would be completed by April 2016. Last week the agency said it had
completed the search process for the correspondence but also said it was
delaying the completion of the request until late November 2016
— weeks after the presidential election. The delay was issued in the same
week the Obama administration filed a court motion to
try to kill a lawsuit aimed at forcing the federal government to more quickly
comply with open records requests for Clinton-era State Department documents.
Clinton’s shifting
positions on the TPP have been a source of controversy during the campaign: She repeatedly promoted
the deal as secretary of state but then in 2015 said, "I did
not work on TPP," even though some leaked State Department cables show that her agency was involved in
diplomatic discussions about the pact. Clinton announced in
October that she now opposes the deal — and has disputed that
she ever fully backed it in the first place.
