The Department asked for more time to comply with a court order mandating the monthly release of Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 work emails. | Getty State Department asks for deadline extension on Hillary Clinton emails

The State Department is asking a federal judge for a one-month extension to finish releasing the final batch of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, a State official confirmed Friday.

The Department asked for more time to comply with a court order mandating the monthly release of Clinton’s 30,000 work emails that followed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Under the court's timeline for release, State was supposed to make public the final batch of documents — which will be the largest in terms of page volume — on Jan. 31. Instead they’re seeking an extension through Feb. 29.


“[T]he Department asked the court for a one month extension, to February 29th, to finish our production of former Secretary Clinton’s emails,” State deputy spokesperson Mark Toner said in an emailed statement. “State Department staff have been working extremely hard to process these emails and we are committed to getting them out. The court’s goal for this month’s production represented the largest number of pages to date.”

The news comes just days after the intelligence community inspector general told lawmakers that intelligence agencies had discovered classified information in Clinton's emails that’s even more sensitive than “top secret” — the highest classification of national security information in government. Clinton has consistently maintained that none of the messages were marked classified when she sent them.

The letter reignited questions about a longstanding debate between State and intelligence agencies, who have disagreed about the level of classification necessary for some of the emails that pass through Clinton’s unsecured server.

The last batch is expected to include some of these messages, which have been held from release as the agencies try to sort out their differences.

Toner acknowledged Friday that the remaining emails are also “the most complex to process as they contain a large amount of material that required interagency review.” But he said the interagency spat isn’t causing the hold-up.

“The cause of this delay is not due to any ongoing discussion about classification that has been in the news as of late,” he said in the statement.

The final release was expected just hours before Americans in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation voting state, cast their votes in primary caucuses.

State says it will still release a smaller production of Clinton’s emails on Jan. 29 — it just won’t meet the court’s goal of producing all of them by close of business, Toner said.

“[But] we will strive to produce as many documents as possible on that day,” he said.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus charged that the delay is intended to limit potentially troublesome publicity for Clinton as the early state presidential primaries and caucuses unfold.

“It’s clear that the State Department’s delay is all about ensuring any further damaging developments in Hillary Clinton’s email scandal are revealed only after the votes are counted in the early nominating states," Priebus said in a statement. “A ruling in favor of this blatant attempt to shield Hillary Clinton from accountability would further erode trust in our political system. Hillary Clinton has already violated the public trust by putting our national security at risk in order to skirt transparency laws. Let’s hope her friends at the State Department aren’t allowed to continue doing the same.”

In a court filing at 2 P.M. Friday, Justice Department lawyers representing State said an “oversight” led officials to discover just last week that 7,254 pages of the emails had not been properly circulated for interagency review. Now, consultations on those records have been delayed by the winter storm bearing down on Washington, the legal filing said.



“During the week of January 11, 2016, State’s FOIA office discovered that a number of pages of the Clinton emails that had been identified during the period June through October 2015 as requiring interagency consultation had not in fact been sent to all the agencies for which consultation was required," the court filing said. "State overlooked some necessary consultations at a time when the Clinton email team’s efforts were focused on processing records that had already gone through interagency consultation in order to meet the monthly interim goals set in the Scheduling Order. Thus, this oversight was not detected until the push to meet the final deadline.”



“The processing of the documents for sending is finished and delivery to some of the agencies has been completed. Delivery of the remaining documents has been interrupted by the storm and is anticipated to be completed next week,” Justice Department lawyers said. “State anticipates receiving the documents back in time to allow it to consolidate and incorporate interagency recommendations, perform a legal review, resolve any disparate recommendations, and produce final releasable versions of those documents by February 29, 2016.”



The State Department’s submission said it may only make about 2,000 pages of messages public by next Friday’s deadline. However, it said some personnel involved in the email review had planned to work through the weekend and now won’t be able to. If the disruption continues into the work week next week, the tally could shrink even further, the filing said.