Clinton Campaign: We Wanted Staffer Who Set Up Email Server To Testify

Hillary Rodham Clinton, former US Secretary of State, speaks during her keynote remarks at the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves summit, Friday Nov. 21, 2014 in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
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Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign encouraged a former State Department employee who helped set up her private email server to testify before the House committee on Benghazi.

Attorneys for Bryan Pagliano on Monday notified the committee that their client would invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to testify at a hearing next week.

An anonymous Clinton campaign aide told The New York Times that Pagliano’s decision was “both understandable and disappointing.”

“We had hoped Bryan would also agree to answer any questions from the committee and had recently encouraged him to grant the committee’s request for an interview,” the aide told the Times, adding that the campaign believes Pagliano “has every reason to be transparent about his I.T. assistance.”

The unidentified aide told the newspaper it makes sense that Pagliano, as a private individual, doesn’t want to participate in a “political spectacle.”

That aide’s comments were echoed by Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill, who told the Times that the former Secretary of State “made every effort to answer questions and be as helpful as possible and has encouraged her aides, current and former, to do the same, including Bryan Pagliano.”

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  1. CLEaRLY INDIcatING He iS GUILTy. OF SOMethiNG. SAYs MORNING JOe!1!!!one!!1!!!

  2. The unidentified aide told the newspaper it makes sense that Pagliano, as a private individual, doesn’t want to participate in a “political spectacle.”

    I believe the proper term is “witch-hunt.”

  3. Maybe he could finally take the heat off Hillary.

  4. And that Eye-talian name means he’s really shifty. :wink:

  5. Avatar for paulw paulw says:

    OK, quick, tell us every single detail of something you did 5 years ago, knowing that some of the questions will be gotchas relying on interpretations of technical jargon that go completely contrary to common sense, and that if you get anything wrong you could go to jail. Oh, and even if you get everything right, that dozens of people will be standing up on national television arguing that you should go to jail anyway.

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