There is one last batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails that was set to be released by January 29, but the State Department on Friday sought a delay until Feb. 29—conveniently after the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses, as well as the Nevada Democratic Caucus and the South Carolina Democratic Primary.
The department insisted that the delay in disclosing the emails was not related to the presidential primary season. Rather, it is because of “oversight” and the snowstorm in D.C., a spokesman said.
Via The Hill:
In a court filing, the department asked a federal court to delay by a month the Jan. 29 deadline for it to release the last batch of roughly 55,000 pages of Clinton’s emails believed to be work-related.
The emails, thousands of which have been released on a monthly basis since last year, have become a constant headache for Clinton’s front-runner Democratic presidential campaign. More than 1,300 of the emails from the former secretary of State's private email account and server have been classified — some at a level higher than top secret.
Roughly 82 percent of Clinton’s emails have been released, the State Department says.
However, last week the State Department realized that more than 7,200 pages of Clinton’s emails had not yet been sent to other agencies, which are required to review them for potential redactions before they can be made public.
“State overlooked some necessary consultations at a time when the Clinton email team’s efforts were focused on processing records that had already gone through interagency consultation in order to meet the monthly interim goals,” the State Department said in the court filing. “Thus, this oversight was not detected until the push to meet the final deadline.”
According to the filing, the snowstorm in D.C. further “interrupted” the ability to send the pages to the necessary agencies, as the federal government closed early on Friday ahead of the storm, and may possibly be closed early next week during cleanup.
“[T]his storm will disrupt the Clinton email team’s current plans to work a significant number of hours throughout the upcoming weekend and could affect the number of documents that can be produced on January 29, 2016," it continued.
Spokesman Mark Turner said that despite the request for a delay, some of the emails will still be released on January 29.
“We will strive to produce as many documents as possible on that day,” he said.