A day after the State Department proposed a plan to release thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State by next January, the federal judge in the case said he would force the Obama Administration to speed up that process.
In a Tuesday morning hearing, Judge Rudolph Contreras told the State Department that it had one week to come up with a schedule for the release of thousands of Clinton's emails - instead of waiting until early next year to release them all at once.
In a legal filing on Monday, the State Department had argued that the sensitive and complicated nature of the Clinton emails required extra time to insure that the materials are properly reviewed.
Credit: Jamie Dupree
Credit: Jamie Dupree
But the judge's move would seem to accelerate that timeline to make the emails public; these emails had been kept on Clinton's private email server, which she used as Secretary of State instead of a government email address.
Clinton has said she would like the emails released as soon as possible; the State Department's original timeline would have made them public just over two weeks before the 2016 Iowa Caucuses.
In Iowa, Clinton finally took questions from reporters, who asked about the production of her emails - her response was she wants those emails released soon.
"I want them out as soon as they can get out," Clinton told reporters after an event at an Iowa bike shop.
But while Clinton wants them released as soon as possible, that timing may not be what the State Department has planned.
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