WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton's State Department emails must be made public on a rolling basis instead of a mass release in January, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, rejecting a government proposal for releasing about 55,000 pages of the correspondence early next year.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras also ordered the State Department to update the status of document production every 60 days and to propose a deadline for making public any of Clinton's emails related to the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Clinton, who announced her bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination last month, is facing scrutiny for exclusively using a private email account while secretary of state. Campaigning in Iowa on Tuesday, she said she wants the emails released as soon as possible but put the onus on the State Department.
"Nobody has a bigger interest in getting them released than I do," she said. But asked whether she would demand their release, Clinton said, "They're not mine. They belong to the State Department."
Republicans continued to insist Tuesday that she had things to hide.
"If Clinton wanted all of her emails to be public, she wouldn't have created her own server in the first place," said Allison Moore, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
The emails, handled on Clinton's private server and provided to the agency in December, must undergo an internal review before they can be released, the State Department said in a federal court filing Monday in response to a public-records request by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold.
The agency had asked the court to set a proposed completion date of Jan. 15, 2016. Instead, Contreras, in an order posted on the case docket, called for "a new production schedule for the Secretary Clinton emails that accounts for rolling production."
The State Department said it will comply with the ruling, though a spokesman cautioned that the release of 30,000 emails totaling 55,000 pages of documents will require coordination with other agencies.
"We will come up with a schedule for rolling production," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said Tuesday.
The judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama, gave the State Department until next Tuesday to come up with a plan.
The legal battle over the State Department's proposed time frame for releasing the emails doesn't directly involve a Republican-led House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks, which killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador.
The State Department said it has already responded to the panel's request, having submitted in February 296 emails deemed relevant to the investigation. That correspondence was chosen after the committee's requests for Benghazi-related material were given a priority review, according to the agency.
All the material that can be publicly released from that initial batch of 296 emails is to be posted as early as this week on the State Department website.
Committee spokesman Jamal Ware said Tuesday that the House panel "is focused on Benghazi" and "always has been."
"Because the public, the media and other committees of Congress have additional inquiries, any additional emails or records that come out as a result of the committee's efforts are an added public benefit," Ware said in an email.
Although the committee didn't request all 30,000 emails, the panel's chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, and other Republicans have made a point that the entire collection was selected by Clinton.
Clinton has said through her lawyer that another 31,000 emails on her private server that she deemed personal in nature were deleted.
Leopold's case is among a flurry of suits seeking access to all or part of Clinton's State Department email through the federal Freedom of Information Act. Other cases have been filed by the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch, as well as by The Associated Press and Gawker, the media and pop culture website.
Clinton, who for weeks has avoided the media, was drawn into an exchange with journalists Tuesday, briefly answering questions about the emails, donations to her family foundation, the millions she earned giving speeches and the Iraq war.
It was a rare unscripted five minutes for a campaign that has left little to chance. Clinton sought to turn uncomfortable questions about her record and the contention that continues to swirl around her and former President Bill Clinton to her advantage.
"Bill and I have been blessed," she said of the $25 million they earned over the past 17 months giving speeches to companies, many of which have business before the government. "We are very grateful for the opportunities we have had."
That income figure was disclosed last week by Clinton's team, which filed a required statement of financial interest with the Federal Election Commission on Friday night. Clinton spoke publicly about the fees for the first time Tuesday, and she sought to use her personal windfall to emphasize an oft-repeated campaign talking point about the troubles of the middle class.
"We have never forgotten where we came from, never forgotten the kind of country that we want to see for our granddaughter, and that means we are going to fight to make sure that everybody has the same chances to live up to his or her own God-given potential," she said. "Most Americans understand the deck is stacked for those at the top. I am running a campaign that has very clearly stated we want to reshuffle that deck."
The candidate has been so averse to engaging directly with reporters in recent weeks that it had become a story in itself. An impatient Fox News reporter drew Clinton into a media gaggle Tuesday by disrupting her planned round-table event with small-business owners at a bicycle shop, shouting a request for her to answer questions from journalists.
The exchange lasted five minutes. Clinton took five questions before dashing off.
"I am so proud of the foundation, and I am proud of the work it has done," Clinton said when asked about donations it has accepted from foreign governments. Of that money, she said: "It goes to show people are very supportive of the lifesaving and life-changing work it has done here at home and elsewhere."
She was then asked about her Senate vote to invade Iraq in 2003, a move that continues to haunt her with progressive Democrats.
"I made a mistake," Clinton said, repeating previous statements about the vote. "What we now see is a very different, very dangerous situation. The U.S. is doing what it can, but ultimately this has to be a struggle for the Iraqi government and Iraqi people."
Clinton also was asked about emails from longtime friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal, who appeared to be advising the former secretary of state on Libya while doing business with a firm seeking contracts in that country.
"I have many, many old friends," Clinton said with a smile and a laugh. "I always think it is important when you get into politics that you have friends from before you got into politics and understand what is on their mind. He's been a friend of mine for a long time. He sent me unsolicited emails, which I passed on in some instances."
Another reporter asked why the government is taking so long to release the other emails from when Clinton was secretary of state.
Clinton said she is all for moving the process along.
"I want them out as soon as they can get out," she said.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Zajac, Billy House and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News; by Evan Halper of Tribune News Service; and by Julie Pace and Lisa Lerer of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/20/2015