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he first major batch of Hillary Clinton emails recovered by the FBI during its probe of her private email server went public Friday, prompting another round of heartburn for Clinton's presidential campaign and anticipation on the part of Republican critics hoping for an October surprise.
However, there are indications that Friday's release of fewer than 300 pages could be a snoozer since many of the messages scheduled for release are already in the public domain in some form.
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"This will be our first substantial release of information that we received from the FBI," State Department spokesman John Kirby said shortly before the release. "We'll be releasing approximately 75 do ents totaling about 270 pages."
The FBI flagged State to about 5,600 messages investigators thought were potentially new, but lawyers representing State in a flurry of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits have said that about half of those messages are actually duplicates or near-duplicates, such as previously-released messages with the addition of Clinton's trademark request to her aides: "Pls print."
Friday's do ent dump is the first of four court court-ordered disclosures of sets of the Clinton messages between now and Election Day.
One judge has ordered State to process 350 pages of Clinton's emails for release every other week through the election. Other judges have ordered an additional batch of 1,850 pages to be processed for release on Nov. 3, five days before the election.
The actual number of pages disclosed is likely to be substantially smaller than those figures would suggest because State can count toward the total entirely duplicative messages as well as those referred to other agencies for review.
"The order was to process — to work through 350 [pages,] which we did," Kirby said.
The pace of release is also substantially slower than when State was releasing emails Clinton provided directly to her former agency, with monthly releases of as many as 7,000 pages of messages.
State officials say they can't process the FBI-recovered Clinton emails at that rate because they are devoting resources to other Clinton-related requests with court-imposed deadlines before the election. But conservative groups and journalists contend State has allowed its FOIA-related staffing to slump, reducing its capacity in the months leading up to the election.
A few of the FBI-provided emails have already trickled out. Last month, State released two messages Clinton exchanged with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as three Benghazi-related messages. Portions of two of them had already been released.
Where the FBI got the messages isn't entirely clear, but some appear to have come from computer equipment investigators obtained. Others may have come from the email accounts of third parties who traded messages with Clinton.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/1...#ixzz4MQynJc5U
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