State Dept. ordered to review 15,000 Clinton emails for potential release

A federal judge on Monday ordered the State Department to review for potential release nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed documents related to Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server, creating another headache for the Democratic nominee in the long-running scandal.

As part of its now-closed investigation into Clinton's handling of classified information through her private server while at State Department, the FBI discovered thousands more documents, some of which may not have been part of the agency's prior public releases of Clinton's work emails.


The State Department was ordered on Monday to begin reviewing approximately 14,900 documents by Sept. 22 and conduct a rolling review of the items as they are analyzed, after Judicial Watch — which has been pushing for the release of the documents — and the Justice Department said in an Aug. 12 court filing that they would figure out a plan for their distribution.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg ordered another hearing for Sept. 22, during which the court will set a schedule for releasing the newly discovered documents. Later Monday, the hearing date was changed to Sept. 23.

It is unclear whether some of these documents are duplicate of the 30,000 emails already released by the State Department or whether they are new messages altogether. FBI Director James Comey said in July that the bureau found "thousands" that were not turned over.

"FBI found almost 15,000 new Clinton documents. When will State release them? Court hearing today," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton tweeted Monday.

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement on Monday that the agency will have to "carefully" review the documents in question. "We can confirm that the FBI material includes tens of thousands of non-record (meaning personal) and record materials that will have to be carefully appraised at State," Toner said. "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."

"We still don't have a full sense of how many of the 14,900 are new," Toner said later at a press briefing. "Granted that's a healthy number there, so there's likely to be quite a few."

Regarding particular email chains, including one in which top Clinton aide Huma Abedin corresponded with a Clinton Foundation executive to facilitate the secretary of state’s meeting with the crown prince of Bahrain, Toner was firm that there had been no semblance of wrongdoing.

“I mean, I guess I would just once again emphasize that there wasn't a single channel for access to the secretary of state than Secretary of State Clinton,” Toner said. “And for senior aides working at the department at the time to have … connections with the Clinton Foundation, which by the way was working on Haiti relief, post-earthquake, pretty significant role in that in fact, only speaks to the fact that these were, you know, important people who had reason to convey information to the secretary. There was nothing that we have seen that implied any kind of untoward relationship.”

The Republican National Committee seized on the news of the previously undisclosed emails, with Chairman Reince Priebus calling for the new documents to be released before the election in November.

"The process for reviewing these emails needs to be expedited, public disclosure should begin before early voting starts, and the emails in question should be released in full before Election Day," Priebus said.

In an interview with C-SPAN, Fitton credited his group with pressuring the FBI and State with its litigation, adding that the bureau's "criminal investigation has uncovered emails that Mrs. Clinton tried to hide from the American people, deleted or otherwise, they were able to obtain, and they turned those over to the State Department, and the State Department’s looking at all of those emails."

"And so we're going to try to get those documents and where they — see how quickly the government is willing to turn them over to us, and we'll discuss that at court today," Fitton said, adding that he did not know the contents of the documents. “Well we don’t know what they are. They’re Clinton emails that haven't been looked at yet by the American people, by the State Department, so they're going to have to evaluate them under the Freedom of Information Act and see what's releasable."

Fitton said the group had been told about the trove on Friday, adding, "so we're going to try to get those documents and see how quickly the government is willing to turn them over to us, and we'll discuss that in court today."

Tyler Pager contributed to this report.