The State Department overnight Thursday released just under 3,000 additional pages of emails from Hillary Clinton's private email account, including 66 that were deemed as classified, increasing the number of such emails to 1,340.
The latest release also included a thread in which the then Secretary of State instructed an adviser to transmit secure information using non-secure email.
One of the emails released was marked "secret," reports
Fox News, while the other 65 were "confidential," or the lowest level of the classification system.
The messages are not yet searchable in the
State Department's reading room by subject, sender or recipient, unlike other emails that have been released.
Further, the State Department missed a court-ordered deadline for their production by more than a week, reports The Associated Press.
The emails that have been marked as classified were not marked so at the time they were sent, according to the State Department, and Clinton maintains that while she was secretary of state, she neither sent or received classified emails on her personal account.
But still, reports Fox, one email thread dating June 2011 shows Clinton telling key adviser Jake Sullivan to use an insecure means to send secure information on talking points that have since been redacted.
"They say they've had issues sending secure fax. They're working on it," Sullivan said, and Clinton replied, "If they can't, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure."
Clinton was also aware of the issues behind using a personal email, reports
RedState.com, telling Sullivan that she was "surprised" that Diplomatic Officer John Godfrey used a personal email account to while sending a memo on Libya policy after the fall of Muammar Gadhafi. Ironically, she sent the email through one of her own personal email accounts.
Yet another email came from Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's father after the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi.
That email was forwarded to Clinton's private server by Sullivan, reports Fox, and comments that "we force our Diplomats to carry a lot of baggage around while walking on eggshells."
Clinton asked her assistant, Robert Russo, to send a response to the elder Bergdahl, the emails show.
The latest email release brings the State Department into compliance with a court-ordered goal to release 82 percent of the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton turned over last year, said spokesman John Kirby.
Meanwhile, an inspector general's report released Thursday said that Clinton's top aides knew she had a secret account, but let the State Department mislead the public about it, reports
The Washington Times.
In 2013, the State Department told a public interest group that there was no information available about the private, non-government email, even though her staffers, including Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, were told about the request.
The IG report came just hours before the State Department released the latest batch of emails, and as criticism mounts over how long the department takes to fill document requests made under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to the report, the State Department's response time is four-times worse than the average government agency.
Clinton has been out of the State Department office for three years, but there are still 177 requests for information related to her still pending, with 63 requests being closed, said the report.
Watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), for example, filed a request in December 2012, saying other Obama administration members used private email accounts for communications.
CREW filed the request in December 2012, but the department responded in May 2013, saying that there were "no records" responsive to their request, even though "dozens of senior officials throughout the Department, including members of Secretary Clinton's immediate staff, exchanged emails with the secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business," the report said.
The issue meant that the government made false sworn statements in court and did not correct them, said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
"In light of this report, the department should explain to the courts and to the public why those inaccurate declarations were filed," Mr. Grassley said.
State is due to release a final set of emails on Jan. 29, totaling nearly one-fifth of the documents Clinton turned over.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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