At the "request" of a court order, the State Department has uncovered 17,855 emails belonging to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines, a top Hillary Clinton adviser, after it allegedly told Gawker that none were originally present.
Gawker filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2012 asking for any emails between Reines and a list of 33 major media outlets. Interest in these emails began when journalist Michael Hastings inquired about Reines' correspondence with the media, and by the end of the discussion Reines lost his temper and told Hastings to "f--k off," according to BuzzFeed.
In July 2013, the State Department responded to Gawker's request with a letter stating: "After a thorough search...no records responsive to your request were located." In March 2015, Gawker filed a lawsuit asking a judge to force the State to produce documents which were responsive its initial FOIA request.
After a few months, in a "court-ordered status report" the State Department admitted to having located 81,159 emails belonging to Reines. Out of those, 22 percent may be relevant to the FOIA request made in 2012, but their exact contents are still unknown.
"The Department believes that it will need to conduct a line-by-line review of an estimated 17,855 emails for applicable FOIA exemptions," the update posted on Gawker reads.
No explanation as to why the State Department claimed there were no relevant records was mentioned in the status report.
This story comes amidst a scandal which revealed that Clinton had classified emails which weren't properly secured.
