Posted on 09/05/2015 4:18:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hillary Clinton aide Bryan Pagliano’s attorney said last week that his client would not cooperate with the FBI and would exercise his Fifth Amendment rights. What does he have to hide?
In fact, he may have already hidden information that will get him into a pile of legal trouble if he admits it.
It was revealed today by the Washington Post that Pagliano was paid to run Hillary’s private server — out of Hillary Clinton’s own pocket. She paid Pagliano an initial sum of $5,000 to set up the server. Pagliano dutifully reported the sum on his financial disclosure form in 2008.
But campaign officials now tell the WaPo that Clinton continued to pay Pagliano to maintain the server until Hillary left the State Department in 2013. The paper could find no record of Pagliano reporting any income from Clinton on his disclosure forms during the intervening years, and the State Department says they had “found no evidence” of Pagliano earning outside income.
Filing a false financial disclosure form is a felony — reason enough for Pagliano to plead the 5th.
Pagliano’s attorney, Mark MacDougall, declined to comment.
MacDougall sent a letter Monday to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which had subpoenaed Pagliano, informing the panel that his client would invoke his constitutional rights not to answer questions.
There are multiple congressional inquiries into Clinton’s e-mail use, and the FBI is looking into the security of the setup.
A spokeswoman for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was inquiring about Pagliano’s outside employment, said that Pagliano’s lawyer informed the committee that his client would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights.
Lawmakers interested in hearing Pagliano’s account of the server’s setup and security protocols are considering whether to offer him immunity in exchange for his testimony. If they take the step, Pagliano would be compelled to appear.
State Department officials have declined to explain which agency officials knew about Clinton’s server and whether any had raised questions or concerns about how it was being handled.
“My unsatisfactory but necessary answer to that is, again, that’s not our role in this process to really answer that question publicly; that there are reviews and investigations underway that will look at possibly some of these issues is for other entities to speak to,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters this week.
Asked by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Friday whether anyone in her inner circle ever expressed concern about the setup, Clinton responded, “I was not thinking a lot when I got in.”
“There was so much work to be done,” Clinton continued. “We had so many problems around the world. I didn’t really stop and think — what — what kind of e-mail system will there be?”
E-mails released this week show that members of the State Department IT department’s help desk were unaware of the setup and sought information about why a correspondent was getting a “fatal error” when sending messages to Clinton’s address. The tech support team “didn’t know it was you,” an aide e-mailed Clinton.
Federal regulations allow employees at Pagliano’s level to have outside employment but require that the extra income not exceed 15 percent of their government salary. Employees must also ensure that their outside work not create a conflict of interest with their government job.
Another possible area of criminal exposure for Pagliano is that he wasn’t cleared to have access to classified information. If true, by granting him access, Hillary Clinton may be criminally liable as well.
Pagliano was an IT expert employed by the State Department. One can imagine several areas of overlap that would represent a conflict of interest.
In short, Mr. Pagliano is in deep trouble with the law and if the Clinton machine is looking for a fall guy, he would seem to fit the bill perfectly.
IIRC when the president came into office he was addicted to his Blackberry. Security had a fit and did not know how to make it fall within the security guidelines. I don’t remember the resolution but it was probably a major modification or a similar but compliant device. HRC set up a NON COMPLIANT device to keep all of the SOS emails. It is LUDAKRIS to believe she had no confidential, classified, secret or top secret things coming through her email. Her server was non-compliant. As a responsible party for State Dept secrets and records, she voluntarily kept them with a political confidante who did not consult with any of State Dept. experts on how to do this properly or effectively. She needed to keep her secrets. The Clinton Foundation went to $2 Billion in this time frame roughly. It is not really a charity as a charity rating agency could not even do a rating as their records were so obscure as to be worthless for an evaluation.
Al Gore also erased his email during his tenure as VP. The technicians were threatened if they spoke to anyone about the issue.
Transparency...
DK
Therein lies the Clinton scapegoat....
Lunatics....about sums it up.
Actually every single job I have had, county and private, I showed up for work and they set me up with an email addy on THEIR system.
You show up for work and they give you an email account.
There's nothing for a worker to really think about. But Hillary seems to be saying that other issues so overwhelmed her that when it came time for her to go through the difficult task of setting up her own private email server, she may have made one or two bad choices.
There was never a need for her to do a darn thing.
She made her choices because hiding her corruption was the most important thing to her.
Best outcome.
If he gets immunity he is going to have to sing like a canary. Or be prosecuted.
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