Court reminds State to produce Clinton e-mails in ‘shortest’ time possible

An appeals court gently warned the State Department to release relevant public documents quickly from among the large batch of e-mails Hillary Clinton turned over to the agency from her private server. The US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia ruled the best way to handle a Freedom of Information Act case involving the e-mails would be to send it back to the district court, which will determine the “most efficient way to proceed under FOIA.” “In doing so, we remind the State Department that, although it may choose of its own accord to release the e-mails to the public at large, it has a statutory duty to search for and produce documents responsive to FOIA requests ‘in the shortest amount of time,’ ” the three-judge panel wrote.

A controversy engulfed Clinton earlier in 2015 when it was revealed she used a private e-mail account during her time as secretary of State. She handed over about 55,000 pages of e-mails to the department in 2014, but she also deleted about 30,000 that she said were personal. Clinton, who has since launched a presidential bid, has asked the State Department to release the batch of e-mails she turned over publicly. The agency is sorting through the e-mails for potential redactions in process it says could take months.