The Associated Press (AP) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department for failure over the years to provide documents to the news agency under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In filing the lawsuit after "careful deliberation and exhausting" all its other options, AP General Counsel Karen Kaiser said it took the State Department an average of 450 day to fulfill an FOIA request. That is seven times longer than the CIA and Justice Department and 30 times longer than the Treasury, reports RT.com.

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Among the documents that AP has requested are the copies of Clinton's schedules and calendars, and documents and communications related to Huma Abedin, the longtime aide of Clinton, and Cheryl Mills and Philippe Reines, advisors of Clinton. The two are likely to play major roles in a presidential campaign if Clinton pushes through with her presidential plans.

AP also sought documents related to the role that the secretary played in NSA surveillance practices and the raid on Osama bin Laden in 2011, plus documents related to Clinton's supervision of a major Pentagon contractor.

Clinton is under public scrutiny for using her personal email for work-related communications. She said at a press conference on Tuesday that the emails did not contain any classified information. Clinton added that the government-related emails she turned over would eventually be made public.

Meanwhile, one possible reason why the department takes very long in providing the documents requested under FOIA is that few of the emails made and received during the term of Clinton were saved by employees.

A report released on Wednesday by the Office of the Inspector-General of the State Department discovered that despite a 2009 upgrade in the department's email systems, employees created only 61,156 record emails out of over 1 billion sent in 2011 and only 41,749 in 2013.

TagsAssociated Press, State Department, Freedom of Information Act, Hillary Clinton, email scandal