Bryan Pagliano, a former State Department employee who helped set up and maintain a private email server used by Hillary Rodham Clinton. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) (Cliff Owen/AP)

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the deposition of a former State Department staffer who helped set up Hillary Clinton’s private email server to go forward and to be videotaped.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan denied a request by attorneys for technology specialist Bryan Pagliano to bar the recording of the deposition before lawyers with the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch.

The group is seeking to have Pagliano answer questions under oath as part of its civil lawsuit looking into whether Clinton’s email arrangement when she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 thwarted the Freedom of Information Act and the release of public records.

In his brief order, Sullivan said Pagliano’s videotaped deposition would be sealed consistent with other interviews. He asked the parties to pick a mutually agreed upon date before the end of June for the deposition, which originally was planned for June 6.

“We’re pleased that it’s going forward and that the record is going to be complete. We thought it was important for the court to be able to judge the demeanor of the witness,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images)

Pagliano’s attorneys argued against a video recording, saying it would subject Pagliano’s constitutionally protected statements to the risk of being manipulated into “sound bites” for political attacks.

Pagliano is one of a ­half-dozen former State Department and Clinton aides ordered by Sullivan to give sworn testimony in a lawsuit concerning Judicial Watch’s 2013 records request for information about Clinton aide Huma C. Abedin’s employment arrangement.

Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009, stated his intention to the court in early June to appear before Judicial Watch attorneys but to not answer any questions, asserting his Fifth Amendment rights and claiming a “reasonable fear of prosecution.”

[Clinton staffer who set up private server invokes 5th Amendment in civil case]

Pressed by Sullivan, Pagliano’s attorneys have said he was granted limited immunity by federal prosecutors in an ongoing Justice Department investigation into Clinton’s email setup. They asked to disclose details of the limited immunity in a sealed filing to the judge alone.

The Washington Post reported in March that Pagliano reached the agreement in an ongoing FBI criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information. The FBI has said it was responding to a referral from the inspectors general of the intelligence community and the State Department.

[Officials: Scant evidence that Clinton had malicious intent in handling of emails]

The Inspector General's office said on May 25 that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email account was “not an appropriate method” for preserving those emails. (Peter Stevenson,Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

On Friday, Justice Department attorneys weighed in supporting Pagliano, writing to the court that “releasing Mr. Pagliano’s agreements with the United States could prematurely reveal the scope and focus of the pending investigation.”

Sullivan granted his request to file the agreements under seal. Sullivan said the “privacy interests at stake are high because the government’s criminal investigation” is ongoing and confidential.

Judicial Watch had asked Sullivan to make Pagliano’s immunity agreement public like other court filings, or at least to let its lawyers review it so they could narrowly tailor questions that would avoid the risk of criminal prosecution.