Under the Radar Blog Archives Select Date… August, 2020 July, 2020 June, 2020 May, 2020 April, 2020 March, 2020 February, 2020 January, 2020 December, 2019 November, 2019 October, 2019 September, 2019

State Dept.: 9 p.m. Hillary Clinton email release no cover-up

The timing of the State Department's plan to release about 3,000 pages of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails at 9 p.m. Tuesday is not an effort to minimize media coverage of the documents but the result of the complexity of preparing the records for public release and the need to meet a court-imposed deadline, a State official said.

"This is really a function of physics for us. We have a lot of emails to get through. ... That's what's driving the time," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a daily news briefing at the agency's headquarters. "The 9 o'clock release date is not deliberately intended to make your life harder. ... I recognize that it's inconvenient for you in the media. I can assure you this is not an attempt or an effort to be less than forthcoming or to try and steer away from news coverage of this."

Kirby also sounded resigned to the fact that many in the media and elsewhere would not believe him on that point. "I know that's going to be the going assumption," he said.

Kirby pointed to an order last month in which a federal judge instructed the State Department to make releases of the some of the 55,000 pages of emails by the end of each month, starting Tuesday. The judge set a goal of 7 percent for the first monthly release.

"We all recognize that turning in our homework at 9 o'clock the night before is probably not ideal," Kirby quipped in front of a room of journalists unhappy about the nighttime release. "I certainly apologize for the inconvenience that is going to cause."

After a request from the State Department last October, Clinton returned in December about 30,000 printed emails from her personal email account. She also said she had instructed her aides to delete a slightly larger number of emails her lawyers deemed private or personal.

The State Department, which Kirby insisted Tuesday is committed to transparency, initially proposed releasing the bulk of the Clinton emails under the Freedom of Information Act next January—more than a year after Clinton turned them over. However, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras required monthly releases.

About 850 pages of emails provided earlier in the year to a House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks were released last month. State officials say the new batch of emails is from 2009, three years before the deadly attack on U.S. facilities in Libya.

Kirby noted Tuesday that most of the 55,000 pages of emails are unrelated to Libya or Benghazi. "The vast majority have nothing to do with the work of the select committee," he said.