Why the Clinton email story keeps drip-drip-dripping

Monday brought another round of stories about Hillary Clinton's private email server, with a new batch of emails suddenly made public. Some of us were left scratching our heads, thinking "Hold it — there are more emails?"

We thought it might be useful to offer a little primer on what we've already seen and what is still to come.

Are we still talking about the same emails?

In essence, yes. These are all emails that were sent over the private email server that Clinton set up before she became secretary of State.

But didn't she hand those over to the State Department?

Yes, she handed a bunch of emails over to the State Department, which were released in 14 chunks between May 2015 and March of this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act suit by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. In all, the department released about 52,000 emails.

So what was released Monday?

On Monday, Judicial Watch released several hundred pages of emails sent and received by Clinton aide Huma Abedin using the same server Clinton was using. The group had filed a separate lawsuit seeking Abedin's emails.This batch included 20 exchanges with Clinton that had not been previously released.

And then Tuesday there was another batch?

Right. This time it is a group called Citizens United (better known for the Supreme Court case they won on campaign finance issues) that also filed a FOIA case seeking emails. This group has asked for official emails from State Department staff in connection with the Clinton Foundation, but some of those documents have included email traffic from the Clinton server as well.

And will we see more?

We will. The State Department announced Monday that the FBI, in its investigation of Clinton's email server, has come across another 15,000 emails. The department will begin releasing those sometime this fall.

Are these different than the emails we've already seen?

It's not clear. Some of them may be duplicates of of emails that have already been released. Some may be new ones that were overlooked or deleted.

And have any of these emails shown evidence of a crime?

Not yet. Or not quite. FBI Director James Comey said in July that Clinton had been careless in her handling of classified information over her private server, but he said that was not enough to rise to the level of criminal charges.

Republicans in the House of Representatives say that Clinton lied when she told Congress that she did not send or receive documents marked as "classified"; they are pushing the Justice Department to pursue a perjury case against her. That will be the subject of a Judiciary Committee hearing next month.

The issue most of the interest groups are now pursuing is whether the emails show the State Department showing favoritism to people who donated to the Clinton Foundation. It seems some donors got access, but we do not yet have evidence they got favors.

So when will this end?

It won't. Clinton has said that she and her lawyers destroyed 30,000 emails that were purely personal, but it is possible that some of those will still be recovered. That means she will never be able to say for certain that all of the emails from her personal system have been released to the public.