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US State Dept. releases thousands of Clinton emails

US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

The US State Department has released another batch of 5,500 pages of Hillary Clinton's personal emails from her time as secretary of state, raising the total pages released so far to over 40,000.

The State Department has been releasing Clinton's emails monthly since June to comply with a judge’s order that they be made public by the end of January 2016.

The department acknowledged on Thursday that it will fall short of the mandate to release 82 percent (about 45,000 pages) of Clinton’s total 55,000 pages of emails by the end of 2015.

“We have worked diligently to come as close to the goal as possible, but with the large number of documents involved and the holiday schedule we have not met the goal this month,” the department said in a statement.

“To narrow that gap, the State Department will make another production of former Secretary Clinton’s email sometime next week,” it added.

The latest release includes roughly 3,100 emails that date from 2009 to 2013.

According to one email, Sydney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Clinton informed her in 2009 that German Chancellor Angela Merkel loathed the “Obama phenomenon.”

On September 30, 2009, Blumenthal sent Clinton an email with background information on John Kornblum, who was about to become Germany’s foreign minister.

“Kornblum strongly suggests you try to develop your personal relationship with Merkel as you can,” Blumenthal writes.

“He says she dislikes the atmospherics surrounding the Obama phenomenon, that it’s contrary to her whole idea of politics and how to conduct oneself in general.”

Many of the emails concern trivial matters. In a 2012 email, Clinton discussed her so-called "texts from Hillary" photo wearing sunglasses as she checks her BlackBerry on a plane.

Clinton’s then chief of staff Cheryl Mills forwarded an email with the subject line "Photo gone viral!" on April 5, 2012.

"Why now? That was on the way to Libya?" Clinton replied. "You look cute," Mills responded.

 Clinton has come under fire from her Republican rivals in the 2016 presidential race since it emerged in March that she used a personal email account on an unsecured private server for official business.

The former first lady has denied handling classified information on her private server. However, federal investigators, looking into the latest batch of Clinton’s emails released by the State Department, have determined that at least some of the emails contain classified information.

Clinton’s decision to use a private server potentially put thousands of pages of State Department emails at risk, but it also shielded her correspondence from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests.


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