Email is forever

The drip, drip, drip continues:

A judge ordered the U.S. State Department on Monday to review for possible release 14,900 of Hillary Clinton's emails and attachments that the FBI found when investigating her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

The judge also scheduled a Sept. 23 hearing on when to release the emails, a deadline that raises the possibility some will become public before the Nov. 8 presidential election between Democrat Clinton and her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

It's going to come out one way or another.

Questions about her email practices as secretary of state have dogged Clinton's White House run and triggered a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe that found she was "extremely careless" with sensitive information by using a private server but recommended against bringing charges.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters it was still reviewing the 14,900 documents and it was unclear how many were personal or work-related. He also said it was unclear how many may duplicate those already released but that there were "likely to be quite a few" not previously disclosed.

Well now. I don't doubt there will be "quite a few" emails and that quite a lot of them will be embarrassing. The question will be whether there's a smoking gun. It doesn't really matter how the bureaucratic turf war between State and Justice is resolved, because it's the other actors on the stage, who aren't part of the government, who will decide what we know and when we know it.

Meanwhile, what we know is embarrassing enough:

When Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within 48 hours. According to the Clinton Foundation website, in 2005, Salman committed to establishing the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program for the Clinton Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had contributed $32 million to CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also gave an additional $25,000 to $50,000.

That's a lot of palms to grease. But there were others:

Another email exchange between Abedin and Clinton shows a special favor for a top donor: a 15-minute meeting with Clinton, who delayed a plane to accommodate the big contributor.

“Danny abraham called this morning. He is in dc today and tomorrow and asked for 15 min with you. Do u want me to try and fit him in tomorrow?” Abedin wrote in a May 4, 2009, email to Hillary Clinton.

“Will the plane wait if I can’t get there before 7-8?” Clinton asked Abedin.

“Yes of course,” she replied.

Abraham, the Slimfast billionaire, donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.

That's a lot of Slimfast. It's going to be an interesting few months.