Federal judge: Hillary Clinton emails can’t wait for 2016

A federal judge has rejected the State Department’s proposal to not release thousands of pages of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton until next year, instead calling for them to be released on a rolling basis. 

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras called for the release of 55,000 pages of emails during a brief hearing on Tuesday morning, but did not specify a release date, according to Politico, which first reported the news.

{mosads}Jeffrey Light, the lawyer for Vice News, which filed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the emails, said the judge had given the Obama administration one week to provide a schedule for the public release of all the emails, including those pertaining to Benghazi, Reuters reported. 

The State Department had proposed releasing the emails sometime before Jan. 15, 2016, in court documents filed Monday night. 

Those emails, which were submitted to the State Department in paper form, will be viewable in redacted form on the department’s website, according to John F. Hackett, who handles FOIA requests for State.

In March, then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it would take “several months” to review the emails. A smaller batch of emails totaling 900 pages relating to the investigation into the Benghazi attacks would be released sooner, she said.

Clinton acknowledged earlier this year using private email for official business during her four years as secretary of State, 2009-2013.

Republicans have seized the issue in an attempt to cast the former top U.S. diplomat as lacking transparency.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Monday ripped the State Department’s proposal as “unacceptable.”

“Secretary Clinton skirted the law and disregarded the basic principle of open government by hiding her email from the American people, and it is past time to find out why,” Cornyn said in a statement.

Clinton allies hit back, accusing Cornyn of “manufacturing controversy by wrongly attacking Secretary Clinton’s exceptional record of transparency and disclosure.”

“Secretary Clinton complied fully with the rules and regulations that were in effect while she was at the State Department,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for Correct The Record, a pro-Clinton group, said in a statement to The Hill. 

This story was updated at 3:16 p.m.