The hearing came after after 24 hours of partisan bickering over whether Pagliano, right, needed to appear at all. | AP Photo Former Clinton IT staffer takes the Fifth

Hillary Clinton’s former IT staffer who handled her private email system asserted his Fifth Amendment right Thursday, refusing to answer lawmakers’ questions about her unusual tech set-up.

In a closed-door session in the basement of the Capitol Building, Bryan Pagliano rebuffed each inquiry by the House Select Committee on Benghazi after 24 hours of partisan bickering over whether he needed to appear at all.


Democrats and Pagliano’s lawyer Mark MacDougall of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, blasted the committee on Wednesday for forcing him to appear after he had told them he planned to take the Fifth. But Republicans argued that Democrats on the committee had similarly compelled witnesses to appear when the left was in the majority.

"Duplicity and hypocrisy are not foreign to political theater," Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said to reporters, hitting back at the criticism.

Across the Capitol, two Senate chairman are considering offering immunity to Pagliano, who personally helped set-up the system. Republicans believe he’d be able to share a wealth of information that would aid their investigations, including who know about the private server, why it created and if anyone voiced concerns when the system was put in place.

And even ranking Benghazi Democrat Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said he's open to the idea — so long as the FBI says it won't interfere with their investigation of the ongoing emails matter.

“I want to hear what he has to say,” Cummings said, adding that he doesn’t think Pagliano knows anything about Benghazi — the main focus of the panel's investigation.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) requested an audience with Pagliano and his lawyer to discuss a proffer or a sneak peak of what he’d say if given immunity.

But MacDougall rebuffed their offer, saying such a preview would put his client at risk.

MacDougall had also asked the committee to forgo Pagliano’s Thursday appearance given that he planned to invoke his right to avoid self-incrimination. When the committee refused to cancel the session, he accused them of playing politics.

“Forcing Mr. Pagliano to appear, restate the advice of his counsel, and decline to respond to questions can only be intended to intimidate our client, cause him personal embarrassment, and foster further political controversy,” he wrote to Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), arguing that the panel was abusing its subpoena power.

He pointed to federal rules that suggest forcing a witness to take the stand, if that person intends to take the Fifth, violates ethics rules.

Democrats piled on, blasting Republicans for trying to set-up a “photo-op,” and accusing Gowdy of "pure political theater" because the former prosecutor is against the idea of granting immunity.

"Mr. Pagliano's testimony has nothing to do with the Benghazi attacks and everythign to do with Republicans' insatiable desire to derail Secretary Clinton's presidential bid," Cummings said in a statement. "If Chairman Gowdy actually wanted to find out what Mr. Pagliano knows, he would follow the lead of Senate Republicans and consider immunity."

Benghazi Republicans argued back that other rules suggest the Fifth must be asserted in person, and that the same DC rules recognized that “there may be legitimate reasons for a congressional committee to summon a witness who expresses an intention to assert her privilege against self-incrimination.”

They also noted that Rep. Linda Sánchez in April 2007 did something similar with Monica Goodling, a top Justice Department adviser who took the Fifth after nine U.S. attorneys were abruptly fired by the Bush administration. In a 2007 letter, the California Democrat — who now sits on the Benghazi panel — asked Goodling’s lawyer to have her appear in person “to discuss the justification for her apparent decision to invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege,” despite the lawyer's assertion that his client would take the Fifth.

"We are concerned that several of the asserted grounds for refusing to testify do not satisfy the well-established bases for a proper invocation of the Fifth Amendment against self- incrimination,” Sanchez wrote in the 2007 letter. “In addition, of course, the Fifth Amendment privilege, under long-standing Supreme Court precedents, does not provide a reason to fail to appear to testify; the privilege must be invoked by the witness on a question-by-question basis.”

Republicans highlighted Sanchez's letter in a Thursday release.

“It is important to note that unlike Rep. Sanchez, Chairman Gowdy is not making Mr. Pagliano appear in public to assert his right against self-incrimination,” wrote Jamal Ware, the GOP panel spokesman, in an email. “His session… will not be done in a public hearing, so obviously it is not designed to embarrass him or for ‘photo ops.’”

Democrats shot back that the two were totally different because Goodling was "was granted immunity immediately after she asserted her Fifth Amendment privilege in front of the Judiciary Committee," according to a Democratic spokesman.

"Today, Mr. Pagliano was forced to appear despite the fact that Chairman Gowdy already announced publicly that immunity was off the table," the staffer said.



Gowdy said his staff had 19 pages worth of questions it wanted to ask Pagliano, from inquiries about the custody of Benghazi emails to questions about spoliation and whether Clinton did in fact hand over all her emails.

“There were 15 emails that were never turned over to the Department of State that should have been,” he said, referring to messages the panel found in documents subpoenaed by Clinton ally Sid Blumenthal. “So it’s legitimate for the committee on Benghazi to want to know whether there’s more than 15.”

He also revealed that Huma Abedin, the woman known as Clinton's shadow, would be appearing before the panel soon, though he wouldn't say when. Abedin is also under scrutiny from Senate Republicans over allegations that she had a conflict of interest while working at the State Department and receiving a salary from Clinton's private philanthropy foundation and another outside consulting firm. Her lawyer says she did nothing wrong.

