WASHINGTON — Aides to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton urged a former State Department employee who helped set up her private email server to appear before a House investigative panel, but the former staffer has said he will assert his
WASHINGTON — Aides to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton urged a former State Department employee who helped set up her private email server to appear before a House investigative panel, but the former staffer has said he will assert his constitutional right not to testify.
Clinton, the Democratic front-runner for the 2016 nomination, has been dogged by criticism about her use of a private email server for government business during her tenure as secretary of state, and she has struggled to explain her decision.
The response of Bryan Pagliano to a committee subpoena was unwelcome news to Clinton aides who had pressed him to be interviewed by the GOP-led panel investigating the deadly 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
The aides were not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Attorneys for Pagliano sent the committee a letter Monday saying their client would not testify at a hearing planned for next week. The panel subpoenaed Pagliano last month. Pagliano was a State Department employee from 2009 to 2013 and is now a private contractor working in the department’s Bureau of Information Resource Management, according to a department official who asked not to be identified when discussing personnel matters.
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Benghazi panel, said he was not surprised that Pagliano would refuse to testify, given the “wild and unsubstantiated accusations” against Clinton.
“This investigation has turned into a (quest to) derail Hillary Clinton’s nomination by any means necessary,” Cummings said.
The special committee was established last year to investigate the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. The investigation has widened in recent months to focus on Clinton’s use of a private email account and server.
