The State Department initially proposed processing 250 pages every two weeks, or about 750 pages by the election. | Getty Judge sets modest pace for release of FBI-found Clinton emails State Department ordered to process 1,050 pages of recovered messages by early November.

The State Department has found about 5,600 work-related emails relevant to Hillary Clinton in a set turned over by the FBI at the end of its investigation into her private server setup, but it appears only about 10 percent of those will be processed for release to the public in advance of the November election.

The pace of release ordered by a federal judge Friday is far slower than the State Department managed last year when it was disclosing as much as 7,000 pages per month from the roughly 54,000 pages of email records Clinton provided to her former agency at the end of 2014.


After a hearing in U.S. District Court, Judge James Boasberg issued an order requiring State to process 1,050 pages of the FBI-discovered email records by the election. They are to emerge publicly in three batches, on Oct. 7 and 21 and Nov. 4. After that, State will continue to produce the emails .

At the hearing, Boasberg initially said he would order the processing of 1,050 documents in the case by early November, but he later revised his direction to require only that many pages.

State initially proposed processing 250 pages every two weeks, or about 750 pages by the election. The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch urged the judge to put all 5,600 emails out before the election.

"What we are looking for is as much quick turnaround as possible," Judicial Watch attorney Lauren Burke said.

However, the judge suggested it was "unrealistic" to expect all 5,600 messages to be processed in the next six weeks.

The judge acknowledged a public interest in getting the records out before voters go to the polls Nov. 8, but he repeatedly expressed sympathy for the challenges State has faced in responding to dozens of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits relating to the emails of Clinton and her top aides. He also said he was reluctant to disrupt processing of records in those other cases.

“I think we all need to bear in mind the State Department has other duties beyond FOIA requests,” said Boasberg, who was appointed by President Barack Obama. “I know the State Department has been working very hard. ... The court can’t jump to the head of the queue.”

After the hearing, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said he disagreed with the judge’s ruling. However, Fitton saved his real firepower for the State Department, saying the agency is overseeing “an absolutely corrupt process.”

“The State Department is being obstructionist. They have had these records since July and they’ve only released five records,” Fitton said, referring to a smattering of messages released in other cases seeking information on specific topics. “It’s an obvious slow-walking.”

A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment, but referred to a statement in which spokesman John Kirby said State “voluntarily agreed” to turn the messages over to Judicial Watch even though they were not in State’s possession at the time of the group’s request. He said the records will be posted on State’s website when they’ve been processed.

Justice Department lawyers at Friday’s hearing provided more insight into what the FBI turned over to State. Attorney Lisa Olson said the main disk of recovered Clinton emails contained 15,171 documents, of which more than 60 percent, or over 9,400, were “deemed purely personal” during a recent “appraisal.”

That left about 5,600 considered work-related at least in part, she said, although Kirby’s statement said some of those may also be deemed entirely personal after further review.

Just how much new information will emerge by the election or thereafter remains unclear, for a variety of reasons.

Many of the 5,600 emails are likely to be duplicates or what State calls “near-duplicates” of the ones Clinton already turned over. (State says a “near-duplicate” is an already-processed message with a nonsubstantive notation, like a request to print it out.) Olson said at Friday’s hearing that the duplicates appear to be a “significant” and “substantial” number of the overall set.

Another Justice lawyer, Marcia Berman, said she believed a sampling of the 5,600 found “almost half” were duplicates or nearly so.

In addition, State could decide to withhold some of the messages in their entirety, in which case they would still count as processed pages even though the public wouldn’t see them.

Classified emails are being treated separately. Olson said a set of those records FBI turned over to State appears to be almost entirely duplicative of material State already processed.

State could exceed the judge’s order but seems unlikely to proceed much faster given the litany of statements the agency has made about being under-staffed and overburdened by FOIA requests and lawsuits relating to emails exchanged by Clinton and her close aides. There also the possibility another judge handling a related case could order faster production, but the chance of that also seems remote.

During Friday’s hearing, Berman said the State Department no longer has the level of staffing in the FOIA section that it did when the agency was cranking out thousands of pages a month from the main set of Clinton emails.

“Many of those folks have returned to their regular duties,” Berman said. “There’s been a lot of attrition. It’s a very difficult and demanding job these days ... and not a lot of fun.”