Trump’s false claim that Clinton ‘lost’ $6 billion at the State Department
By Glenn Kessler, October 13, 2016

Hillary Clinton “lost as much as $6 billion in taxpayer money while she was running the State Department. Now, some people say it was misplaced. Oh, billions of dollars misplaced.”

— Donald Trump, remarks in Panama City, Fla., Oct. 11, 2016

In the past week, Trump has offered some version of this claim that Clinton “lost” or “misplaced” $6 billion of taxpayers’ funds while she was secretary of state. He argues that this shows she “is the vessel, a corrupt global establishment that’s raiding our country and surrendering the sovereignty of our nation.”

<SNIP>

Trump’s use of the number appears to have its roots in recent reporting of the right-leaning media, which reported on a Freedom of Information Act request in August 2016 by a self-described government watchdog (also right-leaning) called the Cause of Action Institute. The FOIA request sought information about whether State has implemented recommendations in a management alert issued by State’s Office of Inspector General in March 2014.

The management alert, which used the $6 billion figure, summarized a variety of recent audits that indicated paperwork deficiencies in closing out contracts that were issued in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. The FOIA request asserted, without evidence, that “many of these cases arose during the tenure of Secretary Hillary Clinton.” In the Daily Caller, this got translated as “Clinton’s State Department Blew $6 Billion In Contracts.”

<SNIP>

Actually, the 2014 alert is an old story. Steve Linick, the inspector general, was sufficiently concerned about media reporting on the figure that he sent a letter to The Washington Post, published April 13, 2014, explaining that it was wrong to assume $6 billion was “missing.” The alert, he wrote, “did not draw that conclusion.” Instead, he wrote, the point of the alert was that “the failure to adequately maintain contract files — documents necessary to ensure the full accounting of U.S. tax dollars — ‘creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.’ ”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/10/13/trumps-false-claim-that-clinton-lost-6-billion-at-state/