State releases more emails in Clinton saga

US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes part in a discussion after speaking about the Iran nuclear deal at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, on September 9, 2015. The State Department on October 2, 2015 released a new batch of 6,300 pages of emails sent or received by Hillary Clinton when she served as top US diplomat. PHOTO | NICHOLAS KAMM | AFP

What you need to know:

  • The communications, which are dated from 2010 and 2011, have confidential or sensitive information redacted and were made public on a State Department website from a total of 3,849 documents.
  • Mrs Clinton sounded furious over a State Department plan to replace “mother” and “father” with the more gender-neutral “parent one” and “parent two” on passport applications.

WASHINGTON

The State Department Wednesday released a new batch of 6,300 pages of emails sent or received by Hillary Clinton when she served as top US diplomat and controversially used a private email account.

The communications, which are dated from 2010 and 2011, have confidential or sensitive information redacted and were made public on a State Department website from a total of 3,849 documents.

It is the fifth such tranche of emails released since May and brings the total of released emails to 37 percent of all the correspondence that Clinton provided her former department for archiving.

It also reportedly saw 215 new emails retroactively labelled as classified by US authorities, a development the Republican National Committee was quick to note.

“With the number of emails deemed classified doubling to more than 400, this latest court-ordered release shows Hillary Clinton put our national security in more jeopardy than previously known,” RNC chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.

“Hillary Clinton’s reckless attempt to skirt transparency laws and her dishonest response to public inquiries underscore why she can’t be trusted in the White House.” The newly released messages ranged from the mundane and trivial to the diplomatic.

VERY FURIOUS
Those signed by Mrs Clinton, who is currently the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, rarely exceeded a line or two.

“Did you find out if he’s (Henry Kissinger’s) going to China?” Mrs Clinton asked aide Jake Sullivan in November 2010.

But at least one email reflected a secretary of state livid over a matter that touched on gay marriage.

Mrs Clinton sounded furious over a State Department plan to replace “mother” and “father” with the more gender-neutral “parent one” and “parent two” on passport applications.

“I’m not defending that decision, which I disagree with and knew nothing about, in front of this Congress,” Mrs Clinton fumed to top aides in a January 2011 email.

“I could live letting people in non-traditional families choose another descriptor so long as we retained the presumption of mother and father,” she added.

“We need to address this today or we will be facing a huge Fox-generated media storm led by (Sarah) Palin et al.”

Clinton’s communications have been the subject of controversy since March, when she acknowledged exclusively using a private email address from 2009 to 2013, eschewing an official government account despite official recommendations.

She has stressed that her actions were legal, although she apologized in September.