State Dept.: It Would Take 75 Years to Release Clinton Emails

Lawyers for the State Department say in a court filing it would take 75 years to release the emails of Hillary Clinton's staffers, CNN reports.

The filing, made on Wednesday, noted that the records requested in two lawsuits by the Republican National Committee consist of 450,000 pages, and included the former secretary of state's aides Cheryl Mills and Jacob Sullivan as well as State Department official Patrick Kennedy.

"Given the Department's current [Freedom of Information Act] (FOIA) workload and the complexity of these documents, it can process about 500 pages a month, meaning it would take approximately 16-and-2/3 years to complete the review of the Mills documents, 33-and-1/3 years to finish the review of the Sullivan documents, and 25 years to wrap up the review of the Kennedy documents – or 75 years in total," the lawyers wrote.

State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told CNN on Monday that FOIA requests have tripled since 2008.

"In fiscal year 2015 alone we received approximately 22,000 FOIA requests," Trudeau said.

"The requests are also frequently more complex and seek larger volumes of documents, requiring significantly more time, resources, and interagency coordination. While we have increased staffing for our FOIA office, our available resources are still nonetheless constrained."

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