Figure amounts to just 5% of those reviewed thus far, but only 20% of the 30,000 messages handed over to US authorities have yet been examined

Lawyers for the US State Department say they have already identified 305 emails in Hillary Clinton’s private account that may have contained classified information or otherwise require further review, according to a court filing on Monday.



So far, in the ongoing examination of the Democratic presidential candidate’s emails, only 20% of the 30,000 messages turned over to the federal government have been examined. Of those, 305 emails, representing just 5% of those reviewed, have been flagged for further review.

Last week, the inspector general for the intelligence community reported that two of the emails in Clinton’s private inbox contained information that should have been labelled “top secret” and reportedly came from satellite intercepts.

The ongoing controversy over Clinton’s use of a personal email based on a “private homebrew server” has continued to cause political damage to the Democratic frontrunner for months. The news first emerged in March when the New York Times reported that Clinton had never used a government email account. Instead, she relied on the email address HDR22@clintonemail.com. Since an 11 March press conference at the United Nations in New York, Clinton has struggled to answer questions about her email usage.

Most recently, in a speech in Iowa on Friday, Clinton alleged that the investigation of her email was a partisan witch-hunt. The former secretary of state told a crowd of Iowa Democrats that the investigation was “not about emails or servers either – it’s about politics”.

Clinton also raised eyebrows by joking about the 30,000 emails on her server that she deleted rather than turning over to the government. “You may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account. I love it. I love it,” she said. “Those messages disappear all by themselves.”

Per an order from judge Richard Leon of the US district court for the District of Columbia, the 30,000 emails that Clinton did turn over to the State Department are expected to be released on a rolling basis through January.