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A Justice Department attorney said that the State Department had no plans to process for release all of the emails submitted by Huma Abedin. | AP Photo State Department to release Huma Abedin email trove

The State Department has agreed to process for public release an archive of 29,000 pages of emails longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin sent or received on a private account while working as deputy chief of staff to Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Abedin turned over the collection of emails to State last year at the agency's request following the controversy over the disclosure of Clinton's exclusive use of a private email account while secretary of state. Unlike Clinton, Abedin had an official email account, but she was among senior officials asked to provide any work-related messages in their personal accounts after State officials became concerned that the agency did not have copies of all the official records it should.

State has been releasing portions of Clinton's email trove on a monthly basis in connection with a court order, a process that is expected to conclude Jan. 29. That process has led to release of some emails Clinton and Abedin exchanged.

At a court hearing in September, a Justice Department attorney said State had no plans to process for release all of the emails submitted by Abedin and other top aides such as Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Director of Policy Planning Jake Sullivan.

However, a legal filing Monday in a lawsuit brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch indicated State has acceded to a request to process all the emails Abedin turned over, except for news articles and summaries.

"The parties have agreed that State will produce to Judicial Watch responsive, nonexempt records from within the recently received documents, excluding news clippings/briefings contained therein," said the court filing (posted here).

The schedule the two sides agreed to has the disclosure of the records overlapping significantly with Clinton's presidential campaign and will have the State Department ramping up release of Abedin's private emails just as the agency winds down its disclosure of Clinton's messages.

The agency has agreed to begin reviewing Abedin's personal-account emails by March at a rate of at least 400 pages a month and disclosing the releasable portion to Judicial Watch, with releases complete by April 2017. U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell adopted the proposed schedule as an order later Monday.

"This is just an orderly way of getting these records, subject to court oversight," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in an interview Monday. "This is a review of each of those documents."

In all the cases, the former officials or their lawyers selected the potential federal records from among the broader set of personal and work-related officials in the private accounts.

Fitton said the group wants to check Abedin's messages against Clinton's to see if the former secretary's aide may have deemed some emails to be official that Clinton did not turn over to State.

"Obviously, she was as close an aide as you could have had to Mrs. Clinton. If Mrs. Clinton didn't keep records she should have or destroyed or deleted them, maybe we can find them through Ms. Abedin. And Ms. Abedin's activities are also controversial," the conservative activist said.

An attorney for Abedin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



UPDATE (Monday, 11:27 P.M.): This post has been updated to clarify that State has agreed to process 400 pages of Abedin emails for release each month, not necessarily to disclose that amount.