The State Department has reviewed less than half of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails that were recovered by the FBI last year.

The department revealed in federal court it has not yet gone through 40,000 of 72,000 pages of emails recovered from Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. Some of the emails in question were found during the investigation into Anthony Weiner, and were documents sent to his laptop from his now estranged wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

The State Department appeared in court this month, representing itself in a lawsuit first brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, in 2015.

During the hearing, Judicial Watch pressed the State Department on the reason for the delays in processing the emails, which are being requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

At the current pace of release, all of the emails would not be ready for release before 2020. The State Department was ordered in November 2016 to turn over at least 500 pages a month to Judicial Watch.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton is calling on current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to speed up the processing of emails.

"Secretary Tillerson should be asked why his State Department is still sitting on a motherlode of Clinton emails," Fitton said in a Monday press release. "It is disheartening that an administration elected to ‘drain the swamp' is stalling the release of documents to protect Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration."

The State Department has said it will commit extra resources to the processing of the emails.