Justice Department wants to consolidate Hillary Clinton email requests
The Justice Department confirmed Tuesday that it would ask a court to consolidate all the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails. The move, if successful, would allow a single judge to manage the dozens of FOIA lawsuits and prevent potential conflicts about the timing of the documents' release.
One of the judges handling a case involving Clinton's emails has previously urged the government to streamline the similar FOIA requests.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense for six different judges to be ordering six different things," U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras said at a July hearing, according to Politico. "These are very unusual circumstances, and it would not take a wild imagination to think that there will be some discovery in these FOIA cases, and if six different judges start ordering six different forms of discovery, that's going to be impossible to manage for everybody. So give that some thought."
The FOIA lawsuits have been filed by a broad array of organizations, from conservative groups to media organizations. A judge in one lawsuit has ordered the State Department has been releasing sections of Clinton's emails each month, and the most recent batch -- roughly 7,000 pages -- was released Monday night.
Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner, has faced criticism for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. She's said she turned over all of her work-related emails to the State Department -- the roughly 54,000 emails that are now being released in increments -- and deleted her personal emails.
Republicans have cried foul, suggesting Clinton may have deleted some work-related emails. They've also raised concerns that Clinton or her top aides may have transmitted classified information through the private server, without the cybersecurity protection of a government email system.
The Department of Justice is currently reviewing the security of Clinton's server, but Tuesday's filing was unrelated to that probe.
CBS News' Paula Reid contributed to this report.