Court orders more releases of Clinton emails

The State Department pledged to release more than 500 of Hillary Clinton’s emails this weekend after a federal judge in Washington demanded the Obama administration make two additional batches public before the end of the month.

As a result, the State Department will be forced to release the final approximately 3,700 emails in four separate portions before March 1.

{mosads}Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District for the District of Columbia ordered the government to disclose some of the emails on Feb. 13, Feb. 19, Feb. 26 and Feb. 29. As part of a lawsuit, the department has been slowly releasing thousands of emails from the private server Clinton used as secretary of State.

“The Court expects that Defendant will endeavor to avoid any additional delay,” Contreras said in his order, referring to the Obama administration.

The State Department became the target of Contreras’s ire this month when it said it would miss its deadline to release all of Clinton’s 55,000 pages of emails by Jan. 29. In a court filing last month, the government said it accidentally neglected to send roughly 3,700 emails to other federal agencies to review for information that should be redacted.

That admission came on the heels of revelations that at least 22 emails in Clinton’s inbox were classified at the highest level, “top secret.”

Late Wednesday, the State Department said that it could release approximately 550 emails that have already gone through inter-agency review this Saturday, in the middle of the Presidents Day weekend.

Contreras’s order on Thursday indicates that won’t satisfy him.

After the Saturday release, the government must also publish on its website “all documents that have proceeded through final, internal State Department review” ahead of the Feb. 19 and Feb. 26 due dates.

“All remaining documents” are due to be made public by Feb. 29, Contreras ordered.