State Department seeks 1-month extension on Clinton emails

Washington (CNN)The State Department wants an extra month to publicly release former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s official emails, citing a series of factors including the complexity of the release process and the blizzard now hitting Washington.

In a letter sent to Congress last week, Charles McCullough, the intelligence community’s inspector general (IG), said he received two sworn declarations from the intelligence community who reviewed several dozen of Clinton’s emails and determined that her communications contained information deemed to be “CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, and TOP SECRET/SAP”.

In offering an explanation for the latest delay, Prince said it needs more time for its “interagency consultation process”, which involves intelligence officials reviewing Clinton’s emails for classified information, Vice News reported.

“After the department requested to delay its final deadline for the release of all Clinton’s work-related emails, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said the Obama administration was trying to help Clinton skate through early primary contests”.

The State Department has fallen behind on its releases before due to staffing shortages and other problems. Republicans and other critics say she was skirting transparency laws and endangered sensitive government information.

Each batch of correspondence has been another potential sword hanging over Clinton’s head: even though the majority have been of little public interest, revelations that more than 1,300 e-mails and counting have been deemed classified have dogged the Democratic front-runner since she launched her presidential campaign.

Judge Contreras ordered the State Department to “aspire to abide” to a monthly production schedule for the emails back in May, in response to a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit brought by journalist Jason Leopold.

According to Fox’s Catherine Herridge, two sources familiar with the investigation of Clinton’s private server say that at least one email contained what’s known as “HCS-O” information. “The court’s goal for this month’s production represented the largest number of pages to date”. Delivery of the remaining documents has been interrupted by the storm and is anticipated to be completed next week’.

The final release of emails is considered the largest in terms of pages, as well as the most complex because they require reviewing by other agencies besides State. Both the State Department and Clinton’s presidential campaign insist that nothing in Clinton’s inbox was classified at the time it was sent, but only became classified after the fact. She said this was a decision made out of convenience and has denied doing anything wrong. As to the emails housed on Clinton’s server: how secret were they?