Former Clinton IT aide refuses to testify

WASHINGTON – A former State Department employee who helped set up and maintain Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server refused to testify to a House committee Thursday, and his lawyers said he won’t testify before any congressional committees.

Bryan Pagliano appeared briefly behind closed doors Thursday before a House panel investigating the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks. He refused to answer questions, asserting his constitutional right not to incriminate himself, committee members said.

Pagliano did not answer shouted questions from reporters as he entered and left a Capitol committee room within 20 minutes.

Pagliano’s lawyers said he also will refuse to testify if served with a subpoena by two Senate committees looking into the email controversy.

Clinton, the former secretary of state and front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has been dogged by questions about her use of a private email account for government business.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson – both Republicans – have said they are considering offering Pagliano immunity from any potential prosecution in an effort to compel him to testify.

But Pagliano’s lawyers said in a letter to the senators that any such offer is premature. The senators’ proposal, made in a letter earlier this week, “creates the very practical risk that our client will later be said to have waived his constitutional protections,” said the letter, written by lawyers Mark MacDougall, Constance O’Connor and Connor Mullin.

In a separate letter, the three lawyers accused the chairman of the House Benghazi committee of trying to bully their client by forcing Pagliano to appear before the panel and assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Forcing him to appear at a public location “can only be intended to intimidate our client, cause him personal embarrassment and foster further political controversy,” the lawyers wrote in a letter to Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the Benghazi panel.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House panel, said Pagliano’s testimony “has nothing to do with the Benghazi attacks and everything to do with Republicans’ insatiable desire to derail Secretary Clinton’s presidential bid.”

Federal investigators have begun looking into the security of Clinton’s email setup amid concerns from the inspector general for the intelligence community that classified information may have passed through the system. Clinton provided the server to the FBI last month.