A federal court ruled Thursday that the State Department has until September 13 to begin handing over emails recovered by the FBI from Hillary Clinton’s private server.
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State Department officials confirmed the existence of those emails to a federal judge on Monday.
“It is astonishing that Hillary Clinton tried to delete and hide Benghazi emails and documents”.
The order effectively pushes up the release of some of the 14,900 new documents that the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned over to the State Department.
Judge William Dimitrouleas of the US District Court in southern Florida made his order in response to a request by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which is suing the State Department for Clinton-era records under freedom of information laws.
The FBI has said the 14,900 emails-contained on one of seven computer disks turned over to the State Department-were either sent or received by Mrs. Clinton and are not duplicative of the approximately 30,000 emails she has already turned over. She said she also deleted another 30,000 that she considered personal.
“Using broad search terms, we have identified a number of documents potentially responsive to a Benghazi-related request”, Elizabeth Trudeau, a State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement. They also predicted they would need until October 14 to review the documents to determine which were work-related and to prepare those for release.
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Clinton has faced increased scrutiny over her use of a private email server and new revelations of the close workings between her State Department and the Clinton Foundation. “We are not sure what additional materials the Justice Department may have located, but if the State Department determines any of them to be work-related, then obviously we support those documents being released publicly, as well”.
