State Dept. requests deadline extension for releasing Clinton emails

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- The U.S. State Department said Friday it cannot meet the Jan. 31 deadline to release 30,000 of former department chief Hillary Clinton's emails from a private server.

The department asked a federal judge Friday to extend the deadline to Feb. 29. According to the court filing, some of the delay is due to the winter storm expected to bear down on Washington, D.C., this weekend.

The monthly release of Clinton's emails stems from a Freedom of Information Act Request and are being archived on the State Department's website.

"[T]he Department asked the court for a one month extension, to February 29th, to finish our production of former Secretary Clinton's emails," State deputy spokesperson Mark Toner told Politico. "State Department staff have been working extremely hard to process these emails and we are committed to getting them out. The court's goal for this month's production represented the largest number of pages to date."

The news comes as allegations swirl that Clinton is under investigation by the FBI. The claim -- even made by GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush on the debate stage -- is only half true, according to Politifact.

The FBI is indeed conducting interviews to determine whether or not State Department officials sent or received emails containing classified information. Politico reported in November that the agency has also looked into Clinton's private server set up in her home. The move is a possible signal that the inquiry has moved beyond fact-finding to an actual investigation.

As of Dec. 31 -- the most recent monthly release of Clinton's emails -- more than 1,200 emails have been classified.

Last week, Charles McCullough, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, sent a letter to Sens. Richard Burr and Bob Corker, chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The letter indicated that certain information relating to Special Access Programs, referred to as SAP, had been uncovered in some of Clinton's emails. SAP data is a subset of the highest level of classification, "top secret."

Earlier this week, Clinton dismissed the letter in an interview with NPR.

"As the State Department has confirmed, I never sent or received any material marked classified, and that hasn't changed in all of these months," she said. "This, seems to me, to be, you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign. It's another leak."