WASHINGTON, June 30 -- The U.S. State Department on Tuesday night released about 3,000 pages of email from Hillary Clinton's time as U.S. secretary of state as the former First Lady was launching her own White House run for the second time after the 2008 defeat.

The newly released batch of Clinton's correspondence, covering March through December of 2009, was the first batch from a dossier of about 55,000 pages of emails turned over by Clinton from her private email server. A previous court mandate ruled that the State Department released her private work-related emails every 30 days starting on June 30 through Jan. 29, 2016.

Clinton handed in her emails to the State Department last year and said she had deleted about 30,000 emails she regarded as containing personal stuff. Because all the emails were sent from Cinton's private email account via a private server, the content of the deleted correspondence was unknown for the public.

After exposure of her closely guarding emails by media in March, Clinton had taken a lot of heat as a House committee investigating the 2012 deadly attacks at the U.S. Benghazi embassy claimed that Clinton had not turned over all emails related to the attacks.

Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the assaults on the diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

The attacks in Benghazi, which happened on Clinton's watch, were believed by many as a point of possible vulnerability in her 2016 White House bid.