State Department delays CNBC FOI request for info on China meeting

The U.S. State Department is delaying responding to CNBC’s Freedom of Information Act request for details about a meeting at the White House with Chinese investors, reports Kayla Tausche of CNBC.

Tausche reports, “The original filing requested ‘expedited processing,’ granted in cases of newsworthiness or urgency. CNBC reasoned this meeting possessed both qualities, and, if Kushner had been meeting with investors who would participate in future business, there were urgent implications. After being denied expedition the first time around, CNBC appealed.

“In a May 2018 letter, the State Department again said in its denial that the request ‘did not meet the established criteria’ for expedited processing.

“For more than a year, CNBC e-mailed State regularly to check in on the status. The department routinely cited the size of the backlog of requests as a reason it could not estimate when it would complete the request.

“Last October, the department finally provided a date: July 23, 2021 — 3½ years after the original filing. Put another way: 1,323 days.

“During the first two years of the Trump presidency, the State Department processed 83% of ‘complex’ requests in less than 400 days, according to analysis of public data available on FOIA.gov.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.