The State Department has yet to locate emails from Bryan Pagliano, the State Department information technology specialist who managed Hillary Clinton’s email server, according to court papers filed on Monday.
State also has not located any text messages and BlackBerry Messenger messages sent or received by Clinton, according to a filing from the Republican National Committee, which sued for all of those records in March.
The RNC says that the State Department has informed it that it has “no responsive records” pertaining to its lawsuit for Pagliano emails sent during his stint at State, from May 2009 to Feb. 2013.
In December, Politico first reported that the State Department informed the Senate that it was unable to locate Pagliano’s emails and that his computer was in the possession of the FBI. Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign, was granted immunity by the FBI in exchange or his cooperation on its investigation into the mishandling of classified information on Clinton’s server.
During a press briefing on Monday, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said that the agency “disagrees with a number of assertions made in today’s filing.”
She said that the search is still ongoing for Pagliano’s emails, “which the department may have otherwise retained.”
While the State Department does not have emails taken directly from Pagliano’s State Department email account, the agency has turned over some from the email accounts of other State Department employees.
In January, State provided The Daily Caller with some emails that Pagliano exchanged with Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills. In one of those exchanges Mills emailed Pagliano on his Clinton campaign email address — bpagliano@hillaryclinton.com — asking for assistance after she lost her personal BlackBerry. Mills occasionally used that device to conduct work-related business. (RELATED: Clinton Chief Of Staff Lost Her Personal BlackBerry, Which Contained Classified Emails)
Another State Department aide included on the email chain forwarded the exchange to Pagliano’s State Department email account.
“Copying Bryan’s state email,” wrote the aide, Nora Toiv.
As for Clinton’s text messages, State gave no further explanation for why those records couldn’t be located.
While text messages sent and received by federal officials are considered federal records for the purposes of FOIA, many agencies do not require that they be archived. It is also still unclear where Clinton’s personal BlackBerry — which she used to send and receive nearly all of her emails — is located.