Clinton confronts email bombshell
Hillary Clinton’s presidential election campaign is set to be hit by a bombshell only months out from the election, as the FBI uncovers more than 14,900 emails and documents that had not been previously disclosed by her lawyers.
A federal judge yesterday pressed the United States State Department to begin releasing the emails from her time as secretary of state sooner than mid-october, as had been planned.
Justice Department lawyers said last week that the State Department would review and turn over Clinton’s work-related emails to a conservative legal group. The records were among ‘‘tens of thousands’’ of documents found by the FBI in its probe and turned over to the State Department, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Ann Olson said yesterday in court.
The 14,900 Clinton documents are nearly 50 per cent more than the roughly 30,000 emails that Clinton’s lawyers deemed workrelated and returned to the department in December 2014.
Lawyers for the State Department and Judicial Watch, the legal group, are negotiating a plan for the release of the emails in a civil public records lawsuit before US District Judge James Boasberg of Washington, DC.
After a hearing in Washington, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said the group was pleased that Boasberg rejected the department’s proposal to begin releasing documents weekly on October 14, ordering it instead to prioritise Clinton’s emails and to return to court on September 22 with a new plan.
‘‘We’re trying to work with the State Department here, but let’s be clear: they have slow-walked and stonewalled the release of these records. They’ve had many of them since July 25 . . . and not one record has yet been released.’’
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the agency previously agreed voluntarily to hand over emails sent or received by Clinton in her official capacity as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, but that tens of thousands of documents would have to be ‘‘carefully appraised at State’’ to separate official records from personal ones.
‘‘State has not yet had the opportunity to complete a review of the documents to determine whether they are agency records or if they are duplicative of documents State has already produced through the Freedom of Information Act,’’ Toner said.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said: ‘‘As we have always said, Hillary Clinton provided the State Department with all the work-related emails she had in her possession in 2014. We are not sure what additional materials the Justice Department may have located, but if the State Department determines any of them to be work-related, then obviously we support those documents being released publicly as well.’’