State Dept. proposes to release Clinton emails in 2016

William Cummings | USA TODAY

The State Department does not intend to make approximately 55,000 pages of former secretary of State Hillary Clinton's e-mails public until Jan. 15, 2016, according to court documents obtained by Vice News.

The documents were filed in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Vice News in January that sought copies of all Clinton's e-mails, and other documents related to her work as secretary of State.

Clinton's e-mails during her tenure as secretary of State have become the focus of controversy since it was revealed that she exclusively used private e-mails to conduct State business, a practice that has been discouraged by the Obama administration.

The Democratic presidential candidate had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi this week, but the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said the panel will not call Clinton to testify until it receives all the documents it has requested.

Although the State Department has turned over 296 Benghazi-related e-mails from Clinton, Gowdy and other committee Republicans want assurances that they have all of her messages related to the 2012 terror attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility.

In a declaration filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., John F. Hackett, the State Department's acting director of the Office of Information Programs and Services, proposes a Jan. 15, 2016, deadline to release the e-mails to the public. Hackett cites the volume of e-mails, and the review time required due to their sensitive nature, as among the reasons for the delay.

"The Department understands the considerable public's interest in these records and is endeavoring to complete the review and production of them as expeditiously as possible," the document states. "The collection is, however, voluminous and, due to the breadth of topics, the nature of the communications, and the interests of several agencies, presents several challenges."

The declaration outlines a process in which the collection of e-mails will be broken up into batches, then reviewed and redacted at a pace of roughly 1,000 e-mails per week. Those e-mails will then be looked at by a group of appropriate "subject matter experts" and the FOIA office will then apply whatever changes the experts recommend.

From there, any e-mails "implicating other agencies' interests" will be sent to those agencies for review.

Finally, the e-mails will be sent to Office of the Legal Adviser for another review and any conflicting recommendations will "be resolved through discussions."

Despite the fact this process will be done in batches, none of the emails will be released until the process has been completed for all 55,000 e-mails.

The declaration also makes it clear delays are possible due to "unanticipated circumstances, or circumstances beyond the Department's control."

Clinton handed the 30,000 e-mails, comprising 55,000 pages, over to the State Department in December of 2014, several months before The New York Times broke the story about her use of a personal e-mail server.

In response to the Times story, Clinton said that all pertinent e-mails had been handed over to the State Department , and called for their release.