America
Hillary Clinton's emails to be made public in January 2016
Washington, May 19
The US Department of
State has proposed to the US District Court in Washington to make public
official emails Hillary Clinton exchanged on a private server while
engaged as secretary of state, Politico newspaper reported.
Vice News had filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act seeking the release of the emails.
By
the time they are released, more than a year will have passed since the
former diplomatic chief handed them over to the government.
The
55,000 pages of emails from Clinton's 2009-2012 tenure were handed over
to the department after controversy arose surrounding her use of a
personal email address and a private server for communications during
that period.
The department plans to release them on January 15,
2016, weeks before the Democratic Party presidential primaries in Iowa
on February 1.
"The department understands the considerable
public's (sic) interest in these records and is endeavouring to complete
the review and production of them as expeditiously as possible," John
Hackett, the State Department's acting director of information
programmes and services, told the court, reported Politico on Monday.
"The
collection is, however, voluminous and due to the breadth of topics,
the nature of the communications and the interests of several agencies,
presents several challenges," he added.
Clinton, a favourite to
become the Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential election,
acknowledged in March that using her official email address would have
been a more "intelligent" thing to do.
She said no official mail, only personal emails and messages, were deleted from the material handed over.