Emails published Tuesday by WikiLeaks suggest the Justice Department communicated with Hillary Clinton's campaign as the administration scrambled to deal with the fallout from her use of a private server.

Brian Fallon, Clinton's campaign spokesman and a Justice Department alum, wrote in May 2015 that "DOJ folks" had tipped him off to an upcoming status hearing in a high-profile lawsuit that threatened to expose Clinton's 30,000 work-related emails to the public.



An earlier email from an unidentified source shows someone alerted Fallon to filings in the Clinton email case.

When Fallon informed Clinton confidantes that the Justice Department "filed a briefing saying the gov't proposes releasing HRC's cache of work-related emails in January 2016," Cheyrl Mils, a board member at the Clinton Foundation, reacted with surprise.



The conversation is one of many that shed light on the Clinton campaign's efforts to stay ahead of a controversy that progressed rapidly during the early months of her White House bid.

Critics accused the Obama administration of providing cover for Clinton in its approach to the publication of her records and a subsequent FBI investigation of her conduct, a charge officials have vehemently denied.

The internal campaign emails were obtained illegally from the inbox of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair, and published Tuesday by WikiLeaks.