WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton said late Wednesday that she had asked the State Department to release tens of thousands of work-related emails that she sent from her personal email account when she was secretary of state.
"I want the public to see my email," Clinton wrote in a post on Twitter. "I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible."
Instead of releasing the emails - which total 50,000 pages - on her own, Clinton asked the State Department to do so, so that it can review them to determine whether parts should be redacted because they contain information that could be damaging to national security. That could take several weeks.
In a statement, the State Department said it "will review for public release the emails provided by Secretary Clinton to the department, using a normal process that guides such releases."
"We will undertake this review as quickly as possible; given the sheer volume of the document set, this review will take some time to complete," the statement read.
The announcement came two days after The New York Times reported that Clinton did not have a government email address when she was secretary of state and that she had exclusively used a personal one to conduct her government business.
The report raised questions about whether Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, violated National Archives and Records Administration regulations that said agencies "must ensure that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system."
The emails from Clinton's account were kept on private servers, shielding them from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests for at least 18 months after she left office, if not longer. It was only after the State Department asked Clinton in October for emails on her personal account related to her work in office that she turned them over.
Three weeks ago, roughly 900 of the emails were turned over to a House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. outposts in Benghazi.
Discussions between Clinton's lawyers and State Department officials about releasing the emails began Tuesday, and the agreement was completed Wednesday.
Clinton's Twitter message came after days of criticism that did not seem to be dissipating, despite pushback from allies who argued that former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and other potential 2016 Republican candidates had also maintained work-related email on private servers.
On Tuesday, Clinton accepted an award from Emily's List, a political action committee that seeks to elect female Democrats, but her lengthy remarks about the advancement of women and girls were overshadowed by lingering questions about the emails.
People close to Clinton foresaw a drawn-out controversy that would not subside until she made a public statement. Since establishing her Twitter account in June 2013, featuring a black-and-white photo of herself using a BlackBerry aboard a military C-17, Clinton has used the medium to comment on events, whether debates over the vaccination of children or President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
Clinton is assembling a 2016 presidential campaign that is expected to rethink her operation's dealings with the media, which have been a contentious subject in recent days as The Associated Press moved forward with legal action to have its Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department fulfilled.