WASHINGTON — A former State Department employee who helped set up and maintain a private email server used by Hillary Rodham Clinton will assert his constitutional right not to testify before any congressional committees, his lawyer says.
Bryan Pagliano was scheduled to appear behind closed doors Thursday before a House committee investigating the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks, but his attorneys have notified the panel that Pagliano will decline to testify to avoid the risk of incriminating himself. The lawyers said Pagliano also will refuse to testify if served with a subpoena by two Senate committees looking into the email controversy.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson — both Republicans — have said they are considering offering Pagliano immunity from any potential prosecution in an effort to compel him to testify.
But Pagliano’s lawyers said in a letter to the senators that any such offer is premature. The senators’ proposal, made in a letter earlier this week, “creates the very practical risk that our client will later be said to have waived his constitutional protections,” said the letter, written by lawyers Mark MacDougall, Constance O’Connor and Connor Mullin.
