Hillary Clinton Email Controversy: 150 Messages Too Confidential To Be Made Public, State Department Says

UPDATE, 9:25 p.m. EDT, Aug. 31, 2015: The U.S. State Department released a link to the newly released emails from former Secretary Clinton. That link is here.

It also released a link to all the Clinton emails, including those released previously. That link is here.

Original story:

Thousands of pages of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails will be released Monday evening, but approximately 150 messages have been redacted because the State Department has deemed them too confidential, ABC News reported. The emails, which have been flagged as classified, make up just a few of the 7,000 pages of new messages from Clinton's private server that will be published to the State Department's private server. More than 30,000 emails will ultimately be released to the public.

The latest disclosure will bring the count of redacted emails to around 213, a number that may increase by Monday evening's release since the classified emails are still being assessed, according to State Department spokesman Mark Toner. Intelligence agencies will review another 305 emails to determine whether they, too, need to be redacted, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Emails do not have to be made public if they contain "classified information for national defense of foreign policy," according to Freedom of Information Act guidelines.

Clinton turned over her private email server and thumb drive in June after months of criticism for using her private email address to conduct affairs regarding highly sensitive information during her tenure as secretary of state.

She has maintained she did not use her government email address, as is protocol, out of convenience. The Democratic presidential candidate told reporters Wednesday that "she should have used two emails."

"I know people have raised questions about my email use as secretary of state, and I understand why," Clinton said Wednesday in Iowa. "I get it. So here’s what I want the American people to know. My use of personal email was allowed by the State Department. It clearly wasn’t the best choice. I should've used two emails: one personal, one for work, and I take responsibility for that decision. And I want to be as transparent as possible, which is why I turned 55,000 pages, why I've turned over my server."

Clinton reportedly has launched a plan to get past the email scandal, which has endured for the last six months, according to the Huffington Post:

To get in front of these headlines, the Clinton campaign is plotting a three-pronged pushback strategy. The first, described by communications director Jennifer Palmieri in an interview with The Huffington Post, is an end-of-summer effort to educate the public on the classification process for national security material. The second, coming when Congress returns from recess, is to aggressively pivot to policy announcements, from economic and women's issues to President Barack Obama's Iran deal, which will receive a vote in September. The last is to "go on offense" on Clinton's record as secretary of state, which the campaign sees as the ultimate target of her Republican critics.

The latest set of emails will mark the fourth release of documents from Clinton's private email server.