Hillary Clinton’s personal IT guru is still refusing to meet with Congress, his attorney recently told the chairmen of two Senate committees.
Last month, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security chairman Ron Johnson asked Mark MacDougall, the attorney for Bryan Pagliano, if his client would be willing to testify about his work on Clinton’s server.
MacDougall said his client would “respectfully decline” the invitation, according to the letter, which was first obtained by the Associated Press.
Pagliano was recently granted immunity by the FBI in exchange for his cooperation in the investigation into Clinton’s server. He was hired at the State Department in May 2009 to set up and maintain Clinton’s email server, which has been found to contain classified information.
Grassley and Johnson, both Republicans, had hoped that Pagliano’s immunity deal meant he would also be willing to talk to Congress. In September, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a brief meeting with the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
But in the March 11 letter, MacDougall asserted that his client had not waived his Fifth Amendment rights “as a matter of fact or law.”
“With all appropriate respect, whether and when a citizen may assert a constitutional right is not up to your legal staff,” the lawyer wrote. “Whatever agreement Mr. Pagliano may have reached with the Department of Justice in no way constitutes a waiver of his Fifth Amendment rights.”
MacDougall, who works for Akin Gump, a Washington D.C. firm that has close ties to Clinton, also asserted that the media has published inaccurate reports about Pagliano, who had worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
“Much of the media reporting with regard to Mr. Pagliano — that is apparently relied upon by your Committees — is inaccurate and misleading,” he wrote without elaborating.