A U.S. judge has ordered the State Department to release by Sept. 13 any emails it finds between Hillary Clinton and the White House from the week of the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, among the thousands of additional emails uncovered by federal investigators.

The document drop could create one or more news bombshells just eight weeks before Election Day and at least a week before any U.S. states open their 'early voting' periods.

The order came Thursday after the FBI gave the department a disc earlier this month containing 14,900 emails to and from Clinton and other documents it said it had recovered that she did not return to the government – despite pledging last year that she had done so.

Judge William Dimitrouleas of the U.S. District Court in southern Florida made his order in response to a request by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which is suing the State Department for Clinton-era records under freedom of information laws.

The latest courtroom victory for a conservative watchdog group could spell new trouble for Hillary Clinton, who will see potentially embarrassing emails that she deleted surface 8 weeks before Election Day

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton called it 'astonishing that Hillary Clinton tried to delete and hide Benghazi emails and documents'

Judicial Watch is a 22-year-old conservative watchdog group that uses the Freedom Of Information Act and other 'sunshine' laws to put government information in the public domain.

Federal Judge William Dimitrouleas is putting the State Department's feet to the fire, potentially exposing more Hillary Clinton secrets in the 8 weeks before the election

Its typical tactic is to file FOIA requests and then take government agencies to court if they don't respond.

Although most of the organization's targets have been liberal politicians, it also joined with a left-wing group during the George W. Bush administration to sue for records related to Vice President Dick Cheney's secretive energy policy task force.

During the Obama administration it has been busy suing the State Department over document related to the Benghazi terror attack and Hillary Clinton's email scandal.

It also filed suit against the IRS over its unwillingness to disclose information about how its agents targeted right-wing groups for special scrutiny.

The Benghazi terror attack in 2012 killed four Americans and gutted the American diplomatic mission in the Libyan port city

Christopher Stevens served as the U.S. Ambassador to Libya from June 2012 to September 11, 2012 when he was killed in the attack

Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has been criticized for using an unauthorized private email system run from a server in the basement of her home while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 – a decision she says was wrong and that she regrets.

The issue has hung over her campaign for the White House and raised questions among voters about her trustworthiness.

Fitton and his watchdog group have been taking government agencies to court and exposing their secrets since he became its president in 1998

Spokesmen for Clinton did not respond to requests for comment.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement: 'It is astonishing that Hillary Clinton tried to delete and hide Benghazi emails and documents.'

'No wonder federal courts in Florida and DC are ordering the State Department to stop stalling and begin releasing the 14,900 new Clinton emails.'

At least one other judge has said the department will eventually have to release all the newly recovered work emails, and at least some are expected to appear before the Nov. 8 presidential election.

After the system's existence became more widely known, Clinton returned what she said were all her work emails to the State Department in 2014, and the department released them in batches to the public, some 30,000 in all.

Clinton has testified before Congress about the causes of the Benghazi fiasco, infamously asking 'what difference at this point does it make?'

WHO IS JUDICIAL WATCH? Judicial Watch is a conservative-leaning group that relies on lawyers and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to force the government to reveal information about its inner workings It has filed numerous lawsuits to require disclosure, including suing the State Department to release Hillary Clinton’s emails and pushing for more prompt release It also has sued to gain information about Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s special status as a government employee given permission to do outside work, and sought information on Benghazi and IRS activities It hounded Bill Clinton’s administration with lawsuits in the 1990s, but it also sued the George W. Bush administration for release of minutes from a secret energy task force stocked with oil industry bigs It was founded by conservative lawyer Larry Klayman, got funds from conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, and is currently headed by Tom Fitton Advertisement

The FBI took her server in 2015 after it was discovered she had sent and received classified government secrets through the system, which the government bans.

Clinton has said she did not know the information was classified at the time.

After a year-long investigation, FBI Director James Comey said last month that Clinton should have recognized the sensitivity of the information and that she had been 'extremely careless' with government secrets.

But he said there were not enough grounds for a prosecution, a decision criticized by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and other Republicans.

It remained unclear if there were any newly discovered emails that related to the September 2012 attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.

'Using broad search terms, we have identified a number of documents potentially responsive to a Benghazi-related request,' Elizabeth Trudeau, a State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement.

'At this time, we have not confirmed that the documents are, in fact, responsive. We also have not determined if they involve Secretary Clinton.'