WASHINGTON — A federal judge ordered the State Department Wednesday to start producing portions of 30,000 emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kept on a private server.
U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras specified that “all of the non-exempt portions” of the emails should be produced, beginning on June 30, via rolling production and “continuing every 30 days thereafter” with an end date of January 29, 2016.
Wednesday’s order comes one day after Justice Department lawyers filed a notice for scheduling the release of the emails, comprising of 55,000 pages, that Clinton provided to the State Department in response to a federal court order.
Late Tuesday, the State Department agreed to produce the documents but had asked for slightly more time to complete the task.
“The department proposes that it make its next production of non-exempt portions of the emails by posting them on the website on June 30, 2015, and that it make rolling productions in the same way every 60 days thereafter,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer wrote in court papers.
The lawyer noted that the State Department had already produced 296 emails responsive to the House Select Committee on Benghazi on May 22.
“The department will strive to produce as many documents as possible on each production date, and will file a status report one week after each production to inform the Court of the number of pages posted,” the filing said.
Mizer wrote that the department is “keenly aware of the intense public interest” in the documents and is “committed to reallocating further resources to accommodate the additional effort required by rolling productions so that it can still complete the production on or before the department’s initial proposed deadline of January 15, 2016. ”
The case concerns a FOIA request made by journalist Jason Leopold.
