Republicans call tech experts to testify on Clinton’s server

Three technology experts who helped manage the controversial private email accounts of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton asserted their constitutional rights against self-incrimination Tuesday and balked at answering questions from a congressional investigative panel.

They include Bryan Pagliano (pag-lee-AH’-noh), the former State Department computer specialist who was assigned to set up Clinton’s server.

“Any effort to require Mr. Pagliano to publicly appear this week and again assert his Fifth Amendment rights before a committee of the same Congress, inquiring about the same matter as the Benghazi Committee, furthers no legislative objective and is a transparent effort to publicly harass and humiliate our client for unvarnished political purposes”, the letter states, according to the newspaper.

Two officials from a company that maintained the server after it was moved to a data center in New Jersey appeared at the hearing but invoked their right not to testify. “I was going out of my way to preserve all of the information that was on those devices”, he said, adding, “We would take the information that was on the old device, back it up, transfer it to the new device”.

In addition to Pagliano, the Committee also called issued subpoenas to others believed to be involved in the managing of Clinton’s private server, including Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton of Platte River Networks.

Chaffetz on Monday escalated the GOP’s battle with the Federal Bureau of Investigation over its decision in July not to recommend criminal charges against Clinton for her use of the private email system by serving a top Federal Bureau of Investigation official with a subpoena for the full case file.

A fourth witness – a former aide to former President Bill Clinton – stayed to answer questions.

Pagliano also declined to answer questions when subpoenaed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch.

Two officials from Platte River Networks also are scheduled to appear before the committee.

He said he considered that to be a “good practice”, even as some Republican lawmakers expressed their skepticism.

Viewers of the hearings were able to see Chaffetz issue the subpoena to Jason Herring, the acting assistant Federal Bureau of Investigation director for congressional affairs, on live television.

FBI Director James Comey last week defended the decision to forgo criminal charges against Clinton after a yearlong probe into whether she mishandled classified information that flowed through the private email system located in her Chappaqua, New York, home.

The FBI provided portions of the Clinton probe file to Congress last month and warned lawmakers that the documents “contain classified and other sensitive material” and are not to be made public.