State Dept. to Release Report on Clinton Emails Right Before Iowa Caucus (UPDATED)
UPDATEROONY 10:18 a.m.: A federal judge was unimpressed with the State Department’s request detailed below, reports Politico’s Josh Gerstein, and ordered instead a “rolling release” of Clinton’s emails, though he did not specify a date such a process would begin.
ORIGINAL POST: In response to an FOIA filing from VICE News, the State Department proposed Tuesday to release its report on Hillary Clinton’s emails in January of 2016, just before the Iowa primary.
“The Department’s plan…would result in its review being completed by the end of the year,” the State Department said in a court filing obtained by Politico. “To factor in the holidays, however, the Department would ask the Court to adopt a proposed completion date of January 15, 2016.”
Clinton came under scrutiny earlier this year when it was revealed that she had conducted State Department business on her own email account, which was kept on a private server, giving her near-total control of her records — all in possible violation of federal regulations.
Clinton turned over 55,000 emails to the State Department for archiving but deleted upwards of 30,000 she said were personal. She has also argued the vast majority of her State-related correspondence included other Department officials and thus would have been captured by the Department’s archiving service anyway.
The 2016 Democratic frontrunner has said she wants the emails made public. As Politico points out, the State Department’s timeline creates a thirteen-month lag between the submission of her emails and any public disclosure of them. It is now up to a judge to approve the proposed date.
[h/t Politico]
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