"....government lawyers have a higher, competing duty to act in the public interest. Lindsey, 158 F.3d at 1273; Comment to ABA Model Rule 1.13 (noting that government lawyers may have higher duty to rectify wrongful official acts despite general rule of confidentiality). They take an oath, separate from their bar oath, to uphold the United States Constitution and the laws of this nation (and usually the laws of the state they serve when, as was the case with Bickel, they are state employees). Their compensation comes not from a client whose interests they are sworn to protect from the power of the state, but from the state itself and the public fisc.2 It would be both unseemly and a misuse of public assets to permit a public official to use a taxpayer-provided attorney to conceal from the taxpayers themselves otherwise admissible evidence of financial wrongdoing, official misconduct, or abuse of power. Compare Nixon, 418 U.S. at 713, 94 S.Ct. 3090 (qualified executive privilege applies in the face of a criminal investigation). Therefore, when another government lawyer requires information as part of a criminal investigation, the public lawyer is obligated not to protect his governmental client but to ensure its compliance with the law. ....a government attorney should have no privilege to shield relevant information from the public citizens to whom she owes ultimate allegiance, as represented by the grand jury."
She was the Counselor of the United States Department of State until Feb 3, 2013. Her appointment as her lawyer now does not preclude her from testifying about things that occurred during that time.
This was a matter of contrivance solely meant to evade truthful answers to a legal process. IMO, it is criminal.