By BYRON TAU for The Wallstreet Journal | TrumpKnows.com
Updated Sept. 23, 2016 2:09 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—Clinton corruption continues as most of Hillary Clinton’s emails recovered during a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into practices from her time as secretary of state won’t be made public until after Election Day, according to a new timetable set Friday by a federal judge.
Judge James Boasberg on Friday ordered the State Department to finish processing 1,050 pages of material for release by Nov. 4—just a fraction of what could be as much as 10,000 pages of material. Ironically, Judge Boasberg also serves on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a position he took on in May 2014 after appointment by Chief Justice John Roberts.
The judge set the new timetable, which previously was expected to play out in the coming weeks, after acknowledging that the State Department was struggling to manage the burden of dozens of lawsuits and thousands of requests for records from Mrs. Clinton’s time in office. The Clinton corruption technique of claiming too many files or papers to act in a timely manner is working once again.
The first batch of emails is due to be released on Oct. 7, with two other pre-Election Day releases scheduled for Oct. 21 and Nov. 4. After that, the State Department has committed processing 500 pages a month.
The State Department says it has identified roughly 15,000 email messages to or from Mrs. Clinton that the FBI recovered and turned over to the State Department. Of those 15,000, about 9,400 have been deemed purely personal and will be excluded from release, according to lawyers representing the department. Another 5,600 emails were deemed work-related, but State Department attorneys warned that up to 50% of those are duplicates of emails that Mrs. Clinton already turned over.
Department lawyers said they aren’t sure how many total pages the newly discovered emails comprise but that each email comprised on average about 1.8 pages, they said.
The names of three top Clinton aides continue to surface in newly publicized emails, putting them at the center of the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains who they are and how they ended up in Clinton’s inner circle.
Mrs. Clinton’s emails are being sought as part of a lawsuit by the conservative group Judicial Watch, which is also the plaintiff in almost two dozen other lawsuits seeking a wide variety of government records from Mrs. Clinton’s time in office.
After the judge’s order, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said that “the American people could be deprived of this information at this essential time.”
“This is an absolutely corrupt process the State Department has come up with,” he said, blaming the department for the continuing delays.
The roughly 15,000 emails were discovered as part of the FBI investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton or her aides mishandled classified information while serving in government. The FBI closed that investigation without recommending any charges.
Mrs. Clinton’s attorneys turned over roughly 30,000 emails to the State Department in 2014 making up roughly 55,000 pages. Her attorneys deleted another 30,000 that they deemed purely personal—some of which were recovered by the Bureau as part of its investigation.
The State Department is involved in dozens of lawsuits over Mrs. Clinton’s department records and is under court-imposed orders to produce documents in a number of those suits.
A State Department spokesman said many of the recovered emails “contain significant overlap with a document previously provided by former secretary Clinton.” In addition, the department said some of the newly recovered emails were chains that included Mrs. Clinton initially but later dropped her.
“Secretary Clinton would not have been in a position to provide the department with these portions of the emails, as the new material would not have been in her possession,” spokesman John Kirby said
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com