NEW YORK, Sept 13 Two computer technicians declined to answer questions from USA lawmakers on Tuesday about the unauthorized private email system that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton used during her tenure as US secretary of state.
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Pagliano previously plead the Fifth in a closed-door session with the House Select Committee on Benghazi previous year.
In a letter delivered Tuesday to Chaffetz, Pagliano’s lawyer Mark MacDougall indicated that Pagliano would continue to assert his Fifth Amendment rights and would not be appearing at the hearing.
“Yes, a brute force attack from my understanding is a series of high frequency failed log-in or attempted log-ins using a variety of usernames and passwords”, Cooper said.
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said Pagliano could be held in contempt of Congress because of his absence. They invoked their Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination to each question from lawmakers and Jason Chaffetz, the committee’s Republican chairman, excused them out of what he called “respect” for their rights.
Chaffetz questioned Paul Combetta of Platte River Networks, who wiped the emails off of Clinton’s private server and was reportedly granted immunity by the Justice Department. August’s FBI report on the investigation into the server revealed that Clinton’s mobile devices were destroyed with a hammer. The FBI probe singled out Clinton and her aides for “extremely careless” handling of sensitive data.
The House Oversight panel said Tuesday’s hearing was called to “examine the circumstances leading to the failure to preserve federal records during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state”. Congressional Republicans have cast Clinton as reckless with US national security by insisting on using private communications systems at potentially greater risk of being penetrated by Chinese and Russian hackers.
Justin Cooper, who helped Pagliano with the initial setup for the email server, testified he did so without ever having security clearance for access to classified information that was later found to have been contained in Clinton’s email.
Clinton has said she made a decision to use the private email account for both work and personal business as a matter of convenience.
Chaffetz issued the subpoena to Jason Herring, the acting assistant director for congressional affairs. “We’re not letting go of this”.
“I felt that that was good practice at the time”, Cooper said.
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“You don’t get to decide what I get to see”, he told Herring, who appeared before the committee to discuss the files along with six other Obama administration officials.
