The US State Department has agreed to release the whole work-related emails that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recovered from former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private server.
"State [Department] has voluntarily agreed to produce non-exempt agency records responsive to plaintiff’s [Freedom of Information Act] request contained in the information transmitted," the department said on Tuesday.
The thousands of messages will be released to Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that has filed numerous legal complaints over the former secretary of state’s email setup while in office, the department added.
Sources said no timeline has been set for releasing the emails, and a court conference is scheduled to discuss the matter on August 22.
“The American people will now see more of the emails Hillary Clinton tried to hide from them,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said in a statement.
“Simply put, our lawsuits have unraveled Hillary Clinton's email cover-up,” he added.
Clinton has come under fire for using a private email account and server at her home in New York for official emails when she was America's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013.
Critics, including Republican presidential election rival Donald Trump, say she endangered government secrets and evaded transparency laws.
The State Department’s inspector general said in late May that Clinton’s personal server violated the department’s record-keeping rules and that it would have been rejected had she asked department officials.
Clinton sent about 30,000 emails to the State Department from her tenure as secretary which were then published in batches in line with a court order.
"This is a very great victory for transparency and, despite the best efforts of the Obama administration and the Clinton camp, it looks like we might finally get some answers under oath about the Clintons' illicit email system," Fitton noted.
The State Department has already released more than 52,000 pages of Clinton's work-related emails, including some that have since been classified. Clinton has withheld thousands of additional emails, saying they were personal.