The State Department must release Hillary Clinton’s emails at the end of every month beginning June 30, U.S. District Court judge Rudolph Contreras ordered Wednesday.
The agency had been fighting with attorneys for Vice News over the timing of the release of 55,000 pages of emails Clinton sent and received as secretary of state.
State Department attorneys proposed last week to make all of the approximately 30,000 emails available by Jan. 15, 2016, but Contreras shot down that idea, saying that the records should be released sooner. On Tuesday, government attorneys proposed releasing a first batch of emails on June 30 and every 60 days thereafter.
Contreras agreed with the initial start date but ordered an even quicker release schedule.
He ordered the State Department to release the records at the end of each month until Jan. 29, 2016. That falls just days ahead of the crucial Iowa caucus.
In his decree, Contreras provided a graduated rolling schedule for the release.
The first batch should contain seven percent of the number of pages of Clinton’s emails. Clinton turned the records over to the State Department in December. The agency said last week that scanning, analyzing and redacting the emails — which the Clinton team printed out and placed in 12 “bankers’ boxes — has proven extremely labor-intensive.
The second release, set for July 31, will include eight percent of the total records. The share of pages released will continue to increase through the final release, which is scheduled to include 18 percent of all of Clinton’s emails.