Washington, January 2 (RHC)-- The U.S. State Department has released another batch of 5,500 pages of Hillary Clinton's personal e-mails from her time as secretary of state, raising the total pages released so far to over 40,000.
 
The State Department has been releasing Clinton's e-mails monthly since June to comply with a judge’s order that they be made public by the end of January 2016.  The department acknowledged that it has fallen short of the mandate to release 82 percent (about 45,000 pages) of Clinton’s total 55,000 pages of e-mails by the end of 2015.
 
The latest release includes roughly 3,100 e-mails that date from 2009 to 2013.
 
According to one email, Sydney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Clinton informed her in 2009 that German Chancellor Angela Merkel loathed the “Obama phenomenon.”  On September 30, 2009, Blumenthal sent Clinton an email with background information on John Kornblum, who was about to become Germany’s foreign minister.
 
Many of the e-mails reportedly concern trivial matters.  In a 2012 email, Clinton discussed her so-called "texts from Hillary" photo wearing sunglasses as she checks her BlackBerry on a plane.