State Department officials on Friday released nearly 300 of Hillary Clinton’s emails at around 12:30 p.m., just days after the agency argued it would not have any of the documents prepared for publication until January of next year.
“Noting the significant interest in these documents and the administration’s commitment to transparency, the department has reviewed the emails for release using standards established through the Freedom of Information Act,” the State Department said Friday morning.
State’s announcement led to a flurry of traffic on the Freedom of Information Act section of its website. Several reporters complained on Twitter that the site wasn’t working for them, and accessing each email was slow going as thousands of people tried to look over the eagerly awaited information.
The move came one day after the New York Times published 349 pages of Clinton’s emails.
After the agency told a federal judge it would not release the documents until January 2016, a court ruled that the State Department had a week to lay out a schedule for producing the records on a rolling basis. State has yet to release any schedule, but today’s decision shows the department has stepped up its effort to get the information out there.
Vice News brought the case to a federal court after the State Department stonewalled its FOIA request for Clinton’s emails.
The State Department is presently fighting 79 FOIA lawsuits. According to Judicial Watch, approximately 18 FOIA cases are directly related to Clinton’s emails.
The presidential candidate and former secretary of state has faced fierce criticism for her use of a private server and multiple private email accounts to shield her communications from the State Department.
All 296 emails that were released Friday were given to the House Select Committee on Benghazi in February as lawmakers probed the agency’s response to a 2012 terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Clinton and at least 10 of her top aides have been called to testify before the committee, although dates have not yet been set.
