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Shortly before the election, the FBI found new messages to and from Huma Abedin, while examining Abedin's husband's laptop as part of an unrelated investigation. | Getty FBI to send Huma Abedin emails to State

The FBI plans to send more Hillary Clinton-related emails to the State Department to be processed for public release, a government lawyer said Tuesday.

The messages appear to be from a set recovered during a search of a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The planned handover was confirmed by Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson at a brief court hearing in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, but no timetable for State to receive the messages or make them public was discussed.

"Today the Department of Justice informed the court that the FBI will be providing the State Department with additional emails," State spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. "It has not been assessed how many of these emails are State Department work-related records rather than personal emails, nor do we know how many are duplicates or near duplicates of materials previously provided to the State Department by former Secretary Clinton."

"When we have the records in our possession, we will identify any work-related records for release through FOIA as may be appropriate," Kirby added.

The FBI provided tens of thousands or more emails to State soon after closing the criminal investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state. Many of the messages, recovered by the FBI during the probe, are duplicates of others previously processed by State, but some are new. State disclosed over 2,000 pages of those messages shortly before the election and is under a court order to make additional disclosures each month.

Shortly before the election, the FBI found new messages to and from Abedin, while examining Weiner's laptop as part of an unrelated investigation. FBI Director James Comey disclosed that discovery to Congress, generating renewed press and public attention to Clinton's email controversy — attention many Democrats blame for Clinton's loss in the presidential race earlier this month. Comey told Congress on the Sunday before the election that the new emails didn't change the FBI's conclusion that Clinton should not be prosecuted.

Several pending FOIA suits seek some or all of the records State is expected to receive from the FBI. Tuesday's hearing was on a case brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch.

Judicial Watch lawyer Chris Fedeli asked U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg to order State to check in with the FBI regularly to determine when the additional emails might arrive, but Boasberg said he didn't appear to have that authority since the FBI is not party to the case.

"The difficulty is the posture of the case. The suit is against the State Department for documents in its possession," Boasberg said. "I'm not sure if it doesn't have them that it has any obligation to harry the FBI for their return."

Boasberg ultimately entered an order requiring State to file a notice with the court within one week of receiving any additional records from the FBI.