The State Department could begin releasing Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails in a rolling release beginning next month, attorneys for the federal government stated in a notice filed in federal court Tuesday.
“The Department proposes that it make its next production of non-exempt portions of the emails by posting them on the website on June 30, 2015, and that it make rolling productions in the same way every 60 days thereafter,” attorneys for the Justice Department said in a court filing, according to Politico.
The State Department Friday released the 296 Clinton emails that had been turned over to the House Select Committee on Benghazi in February.
State’s proposal comes after U.S. District Court judge Rudolph Contreras rejected a plan the agency made last week to release Clinton’s other State Department emails — 55,000 pages worth — by Jan. 15, 2016. Ruling on a lawsuit filed by Vice News against the State Department, Contreras said the agency had to come up with a better plan to release the documents in a more timely and efficient manner.
In Tuesday’s notice, the State Department said it hopes to have all of the records released by Jan. 15, if not sooner.
“The Department will strive to produce as many documents as possible on each production date, and will file a status report one week after each production to inform the Court of the number of pages posted,” the filing reads.
“The Department is keenly aware of the intense public interest in the documents and wants to get releasable materials out as soon as possible,” the attorneys said. “Accordingly, it is committed to reallocating further resources to accommodate the additional effort required by rolling productions so that it can still complete the production on or before the Department’s initial proposed deadline of January 15, 2016.”
To help meet that goal, the State Department now says it “will continue to explore ways to devote more resources to this effort, consistent with its other obligations, to complete the review even earlier.”
In last week’s proposal, Tom Hackett, who heads the State Department’s FOIA division, said that the Jan. 15, 2016, timeline was necessary because processing the emails is so labor-intensive. He stated that a project manager, two case analysts and nine FOIA reviewers were devoted exclusively to processing Clinton’s emails. Clinton’s team turned over the records in 12 “bankers’ boxes.” The emails were printed out and had to be scanned by State Department staffers.
The State Department did not state how many emails it planned to release in each batch. If the 60 day rolling schedule is maintained, there would be either four or five release dates. If released in an even manner, each batch would contain more than 10,000 pages of emails.
