shocked face hereThe State Department on Friday will release roughly 2,000 pages of Hillary Clinton's emails, but will delay the final batch of messages until after voters go to the polls in early primary states.
In a court filing late on Thursday evening, the department insisted that it "regrets" its inability to publish the final 7,000 pages on Friday, as a federal court ordered it to do last year.
Yet it defended the delay, blaming an internal oversight and the snowstorm that crippled Washington in the past week.
As part of the process of making the emails public, the State Department is required to have other agencies review Clinton's emails to check if any information should be redacted or marked as classified.
According to the department, it simply "missed" sending roughly 7,000 pages of emails to other agencies, and did not notice the oversight until earlier this month. Its efforts to correct the problem were further delayed by the snowstorm, which closed the federal government through Wednesday.
The department has not even sent out documents to 12 agencies to review, it said.
Last week, the department pushed to delay the final deadline until Feb. 29.
As the journalist who sued the department to force the emails' release pointed out, however, that would be after voters in the first four primary states have gone to the polls.
which is the whole point
| At this point, those who care about such things have already made up their minds, and those who don't care get their news from sources that will tell them its unimportant. |
| Remember that the "October surprise" only works against Pubs, never Democrats... |