Judge Orders Early Release Of Clinton Emails

A federal judge has ordered the State Department to quickly release Hillary Clinton’s emails on a rolling basis. The injunction comes just as Clinton asked the department to expedite the process, suggesting that there will be little contentious information inside.

ABC News reported that Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled against a State Department request to postpone the release until January, 2016. Instead, the department will have to produce the over 50,000 emails on a rolling basis as part of a Freedom of Information Act request from Vice News.

It has until May 26th to create a release schedule. Spokesman Jeff Rathke said the State Department would comply. The agency will have to include a release date for the 300 emails relating to the Benghazi incident.

For Hillary Clinton, the order appears to be good news.

According to Yahoo News, Clinton told supporters in Iowa, “I want those emails out.”

“[The emails] belong to the State Department. So the State Department has to go through its process but as much as they can expedite that process, that’s what I’m asking them to do. Please move as quickly as they possibly can to get them out.”

It seems the presidential hopeful got her wish, allowing her to air out any suspicions before the campaign gets into full-swing. It might also help the candidate with her honesty image problems.

An Associated Press-GfK poll reported by Yahoo News showed that 60 percent of Americans said the word “honest” describes Hillary Clinton only “slightly well” or “not well at all.”

Still, some conservatives commentators question if Hillary Clinton truly wanted the emails released.

“If Clinton wanted all of her emails to be public, she wouldn’t have created her own server in the first place,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Allison Moore explained.

State Department policy states that all business must be conducted using government email addresses, a rule Clinton flaunted during her time as Secretary. Instead, she only communicated on a personal email account run on her own private server.

Clinton admitted that she deleted about 30,000 emails that were exclusively personal. Only a small inner circle and the former First Lady herself will ever know what was on those communications.

In the end, the judge’s ruling might hurt the State Department more than anyone else.

John F. Hackett from the State Department’s Office of Information Programs and Services explained he understood the public interest in Clinton’s emails, but pure logistics made the release a difficult chore.

“Given the breadth and importance of the many foreign policy issues on which the secretary of state and the department work, the review of these materials will likely require consultation with a broad range of subject matter experts within the department and other agencies, as well as potentially with foreign governments.”

The department might have to burn the midnight oil to release the Clinton emails fast enough to satisfy the court order, but at least the 2016 hopeful will be happy to get it over with.

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