Montpelier — The Shumlin administration said it plans to release tens of thousands of emails that it sought permission to delete several weeks ago.

The administration said any emails related to an investigation of alleged fraud with the state’s EB-5 program were separated out and were never slated to be destroyed.

The governor’s staff has strenuously maintained that there’s no connection between the investigation and the planned destruction of the emails.

On April 1, officials first requested the deletion of nonessential emails from several former staff members. On April 14, officials announced a federal and state probe into allegations of massive fraud with the state’s EB-5 program at Jay Peak and Burke Mountain.

Questions about a possible link arose because one of the former employees, Alex MacLean, left state government in 2013 to work for the Jay Peak project.

Shumlin’s legal counsel, Sarah London, had previously decided to retain any emails that dealt with the EB-5 program as part of the governor’s official archive, according to Shumlin’s press secretary, Scott Coriell.

Coriell said that’s why there were no EB-5 emails in the group that the administration wanted to delete. He also said Attorney General Bill Sorrell has asked that the EB-5-related emails not be made public at this point.