Former FBI Director James Comey discussed sensitive government matters on his private email account, despite previously saying he did so only for “incidental” purposes.

The Cause of Action Institute, a conservative watchdog group, has obtained hundreds of Comey's emails through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and released some of them Friday evening. The Justice Department acknowledged to the group that Comey and his chief of staff discussed government business on 1,200 pages of messages from his personal Gmail account.

The FBI so far has reviewed 526 pages and released only 156 of those, according to the watchdog. The Justice Department declined to release seven emails under the Freedom of Information Act’s law enforcement exemption, which applies when government can show that releasing such information would harm investigations or prosecutions. Another 370 pages were not turned over because they discussed privileged communications or out of concern for personal privacy, the New York Post reports.

As part of the Justice Department inspector general's June report on the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, it was revealed that Comey had used a personal email account to conduct FBI business.

Comey told the inspector general he used his private email account because “I did not have an unclass[ified] FBI connection at home that worked. And I didn’t bother to fix it, whole other story.”

“Yeah. And so I would use, for unclassified work, I would use my personal laptop for word processing and then send it to the FBI,” he said, adding that he did not use his personal email or laptop for classified or sensitive material.

Comey also said he did not have any concerns that he conducted FBI business on his personal laptop or personal email because “it was incidental.”

The Cause for Action Institute said it is committed to having the DOJ release the more than 700 remaining pages of Comey emails that remain outstanding.