A new report suggests that none of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails will be seen until after the election.
The Hill reports that the FBI discovered “several-thousand” deleted emails that involved Clinton’s business at the State Department. The exact number of discovered emails has not been specified.
The fact that a specified release date has also not been given has increased the likelihood that they won’t be released until after the election, as they have been transferred to the State Department. The department will review the emails and determine which information needs to be redacted.
“Just as we appropriately processed the material turned over to the Department by former Secretary Clinton, we will appropriately and with due diligence process any additional material we receive from the FBI to identify work-related agency records and make them available to the public consistent with our legal obligations,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told The Hill in a statement.
The release date will likely be determined by federal judges, who are overseeing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits from organizations like Judicial Watch to make the email publicly available, with a federal judge first hearing about it on August 22. This is significant because, as The Hill points out, there would only be “two and a half months to release the thousands of emails by Nov. 8.”
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told The Hill that he thought the emails would be released before election day.
“But if the State Department once again plays campaign defense counsel for Mrs. Clinton, who knows?” Fitton said. “I just can’t imagine that untoward delays will be tolerated.”
Judicial Watch recently released a slew of newly discovered Clinton emails that showed a “pay-for-play scheme” occurring in the State Department under Clinton. If the emails the FBI has on-hand further confirm this, then between the FOIA lawsuits being bogged down in court and the State Department attempting to stonewall their release, it’s easy to see why they might not be released until after the election.