State Department Falls Short on New Batch of Clinton Emails

A new trove of Clinton's private email was released today.

ByABC News
December 31, 2015, 5:57 PM

— -- The ball in Times Square isn't the only thing dropping today.

The U.S. State Department just released 5,552 pages of former Secretary Hillary Clinton's private email, the second to last installment of the court-mandated roll-out.

But in a statement sent to the press this afternoon, the State Department said it had fallen short of the court's order to release 82 percent of the documents by today. Only about 76 percent are available online.

"We have worked diligently to come as close to the goal as possible, but with the large number of documents involved and the holiday schedule we have not met the goal this month," the statement read. "To narrow that gap, the State Department will make another production of former Secretary Clinton’s email sometime next week."

Had it been on pace, the State Department would have released roughly 8,800 pages of email today, the largest amount yet.

One of the new emails generating interest is the one in which Mrs. Clinton apparently first learns of the now infamous photo of her reading her blackberry through her sunglasses. The photo went viral on Facebook back in 2012. "You look cute," her Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills writes to her in the email.

But much of the email released thus far has been redacted, meaning it is shielded from the public view because of the sensitive or even classified nature of the content. Portions of 275 documents from today's release were deemed to be at the Confidential level, while two were classified as Secret. Clinton's detractors say she should be prosecuted for her handling such information on a private, "home-brewed" email server.

“With more than 1,250 emails containing classified information now uncovered, Hillary Clinton’s decision to put secrecy over national security by exclusively operating off of a secret email server looks even more reckless," the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, said in a statement today.

The FBI is investigating the handling of her email, but is unlikely to bring a case against her directly.