A federal judge said Monday he was hesitant to allow the State Department to take five years to process for release thousands of Hillary Clinton emails recently recovered by the FBI.
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg expressed skepticism over the State Department's current processing pace during a Freedom of Information Act hearing held as part of a lawsuit filed by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, Politico reported.
"I'm not satisfied with saying, 'Fine, go ahead and take five years to do this,'" Boasberg said.
In July, the FBI began turning over some 31,000 emails contained on disks to the State Department after agents recovered additional documents from Clinton's private email server. The department is currently processing about 2,350 pages of emails per month in response to the Judicial Watch lawsuit and two others filed by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold.
Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson told Boasberg the department appeared to be halfway through processing and releasing the first disk of those Clinton emails. Federal officials expect the review of that disk to be finished early next year.
Still, Olson said it would be difficult to offer a concrete prediction given that the State Department still does not know how many pages of messages are on the first disk.