The federal judge overseeing the main Hillary Clinton e-mail lawsuit has scheduled a status conference for next week to see where the headline-generating case goes from here.
Judge Rudolph Contreras will ask the lawyers at the hearing on February 9 where the lawsuit stands, now that the State Department has said it will finish disclosing the relevant documents by the end of the month.
February 9 also happens to be the day of the New Hampshire primary.
A year ago, Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter for VICE News, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department, seeking records related to Mrs. Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. The lawsuit took on new prominence with the disclosure last March that she used a private e-mail server.
Related: State Department Declares Some Hillary Clinton Emails 'Top Secret'
She turned over the contents of her server — except for e-mails she said were personal and unrelated to government business — and the government has been reviewing and releasing them in stages.
In May, Judge Contreras ordered the State Department to begin posting e-mails every month. The final set was due at the end of January 2016. But late last month, State Department lawyers said they would need an additional month to process the remaining documents.
So far, the government has publicly posted about 45,000 pages, with roughly 7600 still left to be released at the end of February.
Some 1500 been redacted to remove information that the intelligence community has determined to be classified. And last Friday the State Department for the first time withheld entire documents after determining that 22 of them contained top secret information.
Separately, the FBI has been investigating whether classified information was handled improperly, although the Justice Department has declined to discuss the matter.
