WASHINGTON -- The State Department on Tuesday filed a proposal to resume the release of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's private account next month.
The agency proposed in a court filing that it would begin posting the emails on the department's website June 30 and continue posting them every 60 days, with the goal of making all of them publicly available by Jan. 15, 2016.
A federal judge in Washington on May 19 ordered the rolling release.
The State Department is still reviewing about 55,000 pages of emails from Clinton's private account. On Friday, it released nearly 300 emails relating to the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
"The Department is keenly aware of the intense public interest in the documents and wants to get releasable materials out as soon as possible," the Justice Department lawyers representing the State Department wrote in the filing.
"Further, the Department will continue to explore ways to devote more resources to this effort, consistent with its other obligations, to complete the review even earlier," the lawyers wrote.
Clinton turned over the emails to the State Department in December and the documents must undergo an internal review before they can be released, according to the agency.
The release schedule must still be approved by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras. The judge's order was issued in a lawsuit filed by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold. His case is one of several seeking access to all or part of Clinton's State Department email through the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Leopold's lawyer, Ryan James, said Tuesday that he intended to file a response calling on the State Department to release emails every two weeks.
"I do not believe that additional rolling productions every 60 days is sufficiently frequent to enable the public to engage in fully informed discussion about Secretary Clinton's leadership style and decisions while at the helm of the State Department," James said in a statement.
Contreras also called Friday for a deadline for disclosing Clinton's correspondence related to the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi.
A House committee is investigating the administration's security preparations leading up to the attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities that left four Americans dead, as well as the response by Clinton and other officials.
Clinton said May 19 that she wanted the emails made public as soon as possible, adding that they belonged to the State Department and not her.
The State Department said in Tuesday's court filing that it agreed with lawyers for Leopold that a search for records beyond Clinton's emails will be narrowed, and that the government will produce the first batch of those documents by September.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press and by Andrew Zajac, Billy House and Joel Rosenblatt of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 05/27/2015