State Department posts emails from ex-Clinton aide

Washington, Dec 30 (IANS) The US State Department posted a number of emails belonging to former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin after the FBI found them on her former husband and Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop, the media reported.

Several of the documents released on Friday were found to contain information classified "confidential", and were heavily redacted, reports CNN.

The release is in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking: "All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-'state.gov' email address."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has previously said that a number of Abedin's documents were backed up on Weiner's laptop, and that some smaller number were manually forwarded.

The emails were not marked as classified, though the FBI later found classified information contained in some emails recovered from Weiner's laptop.

The fact that Clinton and Abedin previously exchanged classified emails gave federal prosecutors probable cause to justify their review of Weiner's laptop in 2015.

Eleven days before the 2016 presidential election, Comey announced that the FBI had discovered emails possibly "pertinent" to the Clinton email server probe "in connection with an unrelated case", CNN reported.

The unrelated case was New York prosecutors' separate investigation into allegations that Weiner -- a former New York congressman and the estranged husband of Abedin -- had sexted with an underage girl.

Weiner was sentenced earlier this year to 21 months in federal prison for sexting with the minor.