A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the State Department to establish a deadline by May 19 for the release of tens of thousands of work-related emails sent or received by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from her personal account.
The ruling was in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in January by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, seeking all of Clinton's 55,000 emails from her four years as secretary of state, as well as emails from staffers, reported Politico.
"At or before that May 19 status hearing, Defendant shall provide a proposed schedule of production for Secretary Clinton's e-mails," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras.
The State Department previously promised to release the entirety of the emails that Clinton turned over in December, saying that processing the emails would take several months, with the exception of emails relating to Libya and the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack, which would be released sooner.
But department officials refused to propose a specific date or month, even for the release of the smaller Benghazi batch of emails, according to Politico.
Considering the various pending FOIA lawsuits requesting those emails, the State Department may not have much of a choice in the matter.
Lawyers from the Justice Department argue that Leopold's FOIA request is too burdensome, so Contreras asked that the two sides attempt to "narrow" the request, Politico said.
Last week, a federal appeals court issued an opinion for a separate FOIA suit, informing the department of its legal obligation to fulfill FOIA requests for Clinton's emails "in the shortest time possible," noted Newsmax.
