State releases new batch of Hillary Clinton emails

The State Department on Friday released a new batch of thousands of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, amid increased scrutiny of her use of a private server.

The document dump — the third major release of material since Clinton revealed her private email account earlier this year — is mandated by a federal court order requiring the department to continuously release documents.

{mosads}The nearly 1,400 emails — many of which were heavily redacted — date from throughout 2009, and cover topics as innocuous as dinner plans and as serious as American hikers charged with espionage in Iran.

However, the release failed to meet the State Department’s goal of 8 percent of the former secretary’s traffic, it acknowledged.

Instead, the newly released emails comprise just about 5 percent of her traffic — bringing the total amount of now-public emails up to 12 percent, instead of the goal of 15 percent.

Missing the goal was a consequence of efforts to make sure no classified information was released in the emails, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

“We have every intention of meeting the goals going forward,” Toner said. “As much as we want to be quick about this, we also want to be accurate and making sure that we’re protecting” secret information.

“We’re just trying to tighten the process.”

The department is under a court-imposed deadline to post its full collection of Clinton’s emails by Jan. 29, 2016.

Many emails in a thread are logged as separate entries in the State Department list. Some emails are completely redacted, while the vast majority are scheduling notes or feedback on speeches or short memos.

Some of the emails seem personal in nature. (Clinton had said back in March that she deleted more than 30,000 “personal” emails relating to things like yoga routines and family vacations.)

In one email, Clinton aide Oscar Flores emailed a schedule under the subject line “Yoga.” Clinton’s longtime aide Huma Abedin, who was copied on the email, responded that Clinton would be in D.C. the following day.

Many emails illustrate Clinton confidant Sydney Blumenthal emailing her notes about a variety of world events, including memos with ideas for a speech in Berlin in 2009.

In one email, Blumenthal wrote with news that a documentary he produced won an Emmy.

State Department official Wendy Sherman sent Clinton two emails, one of which was received with an out-of-office reply.

In one email, Clinton asks whether she has any photos with someone (presumably a former Senate colleague) to send for “a surprise 50th birthday book.”

In another, she asks whether former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) would be in attendance on a trip to Honduras and wonders if other members of Congress could be encouraged to go “to present more balanced picture.”

The fact-finding trip saw controversy, as then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) denied him money. DeMint eventually got funding through the Defense Department. Blumenthal emailed Clinton an article about it a few weeks later.

State Department senior aide Philippe Reines emailed Clinton after Vice President Joe Biden’s unvarnished remarks on Russia’s state of affairs, including its “withering economy,” caught attention.

“The WH just issued the below [statement] because the Biden story (based on interview with Peter Spiegel, WSJ, on way home from Tblisi) gained momentum throughout the day,” Reines wrote Clinton. 

Clinton appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” the following day to discuss U.S.-Russia relations. Reines emailed her afterwards, praising her performance and noting people would focus on her “saving Biden.”

“Whenever you do something big on TV we all hear from lots of folks saying you did great. But this time is noticeably different,” Reines wrote. 

“You were terrific,” former White House senior adviser David Axelrod wrote in the subject line of an email the same day following her appearance on the show, adding in the body of the email, “Thanks!”

Ahead of the show, Clinton also got a heads-up from Lissa Muscatine, an adviser at the State Department.

“You probably already know this, but I just heard from a friend who is wired at Meet the Press that David Gregory will ask you about David Maziar, the Newsweek journalist arrested in Iran,” Muscatine wrote. 

Clinton’s emails have proven to be a major liability during her campaign for president.

Scrutiny of her personal email account routed through a private server at her Chappaqua, N.Y., residence has only intensified over the course of the last week, amid news that federal officials have recommended an investigation of Clinton’s communication practices while in office.

Last year, Clinton handed over 55,000 pages of work-related emails to be preserved by the State Department, and destroyed thousands of others that she said were personal.  

In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit earlier this year, a District of Columbia judge ordered the State Department to begin releasing Clinton’s emails in its possession every 30 days.

While Clinton has maintained that she never sent or received classified materials through her personal email account, portions of 37 documents released Friday have since been deemed confidential — the lowest level of classification.

“None of these documents were classified at the time they were sent, but they’ve been upgraded to confidential,” Toner said.

The State Department released 1,900 of Clinton’s emails last month. In May, it released about 300 emails related to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. 

— This story was updated at 7:34 p.m.