Judge Orders Faster Release of Final Hillary Clinton Emails

State Dept. was supposed to have released all 55,000 pages by end of January.

ByABC News
February 11, 2016, 6:02 PM

— -- A federal judge has ordered the U.S. State Department to finish releasing former Secretary Hillary Clinton's private emails in four installments between this Saturday and the end of the month. The order comes as part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation between the State Department and a news organization.

The State Department announced late last month it would fail to comply with the court's original order to release all 55,000 pages of documents by the end of January, claiming it had overlooked 7,000 pages of email that needed further review.

In a court filing Wednesday, the State Department suggested it could release 550 of the remaining 7,600 pages of emails this Saturday to effectively appease the court. Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled today that in addition to the proposed Saturday production, the State Department will have to continue to produce documents as they become available through the remainder of February.

The next production dates have been set as Feb. 13, 19, 26 and 29. The judge also ordered that the final three productions occur before the close of business. The State Department published a set of Clinton documents in early-January at 2:30 a.m. ET.

Clinton has long maintained that she wants her emails to be made public as soon as possible. She is also accusing government officials of unnecessarily upgrading some of her emails to the "top secret" level, making them unavailable for the public to view.

The classification and investigations of her email practices have dogged her campaign since the summer.

The State Department says it does not expect to find any more “top secret” emails.