Citing public interest in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's records, a federal judge on Thursday ordered the State Department to release the remainder of her emails on a rolling basis by the end of the month.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras is requiring the State Department to publish on its website all remaining 3,700 emails in four batches, on Feb. 13, Feb. 19, Feb. 26 and Feb. 29, reported The Wall Street Journal.
"The court expects that defendant will endeavor to avoid any additional delay," Contreras said in his order.
Two of these release dates fall the day before key Democratic presidential nominating contests - Feb. 20 in Nevada and Feb. 27 in South Carolina - introducing a sense of uncertainty into a race in which Clinton is already performing worse than expected.
Contreras said at a hearing on Tuesday that he believes voters should have access to as many of Clinton's emails as possible. "To state the obvious, these documents have a lot of public interest and the timing is important," Contreras said at the hearing, according to The Huffington Post.
In May, as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Contreras ordered the State Department to release by Jan. 29 all 30,000 work-related emails that Clinton turned over from her private unsecured server after leaving office. She unilaterally deleted about 30,000 more that she deemed personal in nature.
Last month, the State Department asked for an extension, saying it forgot to have other departments internally review about 7,000 pages of emails and would have them all released by the end of February. Contreras ordered Thursday that they be released on a rolling basis instead.
The Saturday release will include about 14 percent of the remaining pages, the State Department said in a federal filing on Tuesday, according to CBS News.
"The Department is committed to releasing former Secretary Clinton's emails as expeditiously as possible while also protecting sensitive information and consistent with our FOIA obligations," a State Department official said.
More than 1,500 emails have been retroactively classified at lower levels, while the State Department confirmed for the first time last week that 22 contained "top secret" information, among the highest classification levels and too sensitive to be released publicly, even in redacted form.
The FBI has been investigating Clinton's email arrangement to determine whether she mishandled classified information.
