The State Department today made publicly available online 551 documents comprising 1,012 pages from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email account.
Combined with the department’s previous document releases –- which totaled 44,818 pages -– the total count of Clinton documents released is now 45,830 pages.
Earlier this week a federal judge ordered the State Department speed up production of Clinton's emails, a process that was supposed to be completed by the end of January. The State Department has said the review is burdensome and time consuming.
Judge Orders Faster Release of Final Hillary Clinton Emails
So far 22 of her emails had to be upgraded to "Top Secret" and withheld from public release. Clinton's campaign has been dogged by accusations she put national security information at risk, but her campaign says certain elements of the State Department and Intelligence Community are conspiring with Republicans in Congress to smear her. She maintains that none of the information she handled at the time it was sent was marked as classified.
The State Department says it is conducting an investigation to determine if any of those "Top Secret" emails should have been marked classified at the time they were sent.
Of the emails released today, 84 had to be upgraded -- most of them to the low "Confidential" level of classified material. Three of them, however, had to be marked "Secret."
State Dept. Deems 22 Clinton Emails Top Secret, Refuses to Release Them
One email featured in today's release shows that in 2012 the Washington Director of Human Rights Watch, a major human rights organization, was recommending to Clinton that the U.S. establish a no-fly zone over northern Syria.
Tom Malinowski, the current assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said in the email at the time that a team on the ground, which was originally skeptical of military intervention, had recommended the move in order to provide assistance to moderate rebels fighting the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.
Four years later those rebel forces are now being bombed by Russia and Assad and risk losing their stronghold in the north.
