WASHINGTON - The State Department has failed to turn over nearly 70 pages of documents, as instructed by a federal judge, to The Associated Press. The files include information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's hiring of longtime aide Huma Abedin as a special government contract staffer.

The department provided only seven pages of emails to the AP.

Meanwhile, government lawyers have asked a federal judge in another lawsuit to delay releasing thousands of pages of documents from Clinton's stint as secretary of state until January 2016.

The State Department's push to delay releasing Clinton-related documents raises the threat that critical material about Clinton's four-year stint as secretary of state might not surface until after crucial early Democratic Party presidential nomination contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.