State Department ordered to expedite Clinton email review

WASHINGTON – A judge ordered the State Department to expedite its review of almost 15,000 previously undisclosed documents recovered by the FBI from Hillary Clinton’s private email servers.

U.S. District James Boasberg on Monday ordered the State Department to process those recovered records by Sept. 22 and report back to him that day. He didn’t set a schedule for public release. The department raised the possibility of a phased release starting Oct. 14, which left open how many would be disclosed before the Nov. 8 presidential election.

FBI Director James Comey said last month that the agency had found what he described as “several thousand work-related emails” that were not among the 30,000 she had turned over from her time as secretary of state.

While Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has said her lawyers turned over all work-related emails and destroyed the remaining personal communications, Comey has said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered documents from several servers that Clinton had used for her private emails as well as by scanning the archives of other U.S. officials.

He also said that Clinton’s lawyers had searched only the headings at the top of emails to find relevant messages, while agents looked at the entire communications. He said the FBI found no evidence that work-related emails were intentionally deleted to conceal them.

The judge acted in one of several suits filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that has been pursuing release of Clinton emails.