Politics

Pleading the Fifth: Worker who set up Clinton’s private server chooses silence

A former State Department employee who helped Hillary Rodham Clinton set up her private email server said he will assert his Fifth Amendment right not to testify before the House committee on Benghazi. Attorneys for Brian 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. The top Democrat on the Benghazi committee, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, wrote that he is not surprised that Pagliano would wish to take the Fifth, given what Cummings calls the “wild and unsubstantiated accusations” against Clinton, the former secretary of state and current Democratic presidential candidate.

The latest revelations are potentially very, very damaging, although it’s too soon to say for sure. Law professor Nathan Sales of Syracuse University College of Law

Hillary Clinton has failed to shake an unremitting email scandal that has dragged down her perceived trustworthiness and upended her campaign. On Monday, the State Department released 4,000 more messages that the former secretary of state sent or received on a private email account and a so-called homebrew private server. But the attached revelations that some 150 others have been retroactively classified has only heightened suspicions about the Democratic frontrunner, whose email activity is currently under FBI investigation.