WASHINGTON — The aide who set up Hillary Clinton’s private email server confirmed in a court filing Tuesday that the Justice Department had granted him limited immunity from prosecution, but did so under seal and asked a judge to keep the details secret.
Bryan Pagliano’s filing is in response to a judge’s call for details of the immunity agreement, which Pagliano said he entered into after cooperating in December with the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into Clinton’s server.
Though Pagliano has spoken with the Justice Department, he has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions from Congress and reiterated Tuesday that he would not give testimony in an ongoing lawsuit brought by conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch.
“The DOJ has not authorized a grant of immunity for Mr. Pagliano in connection with any other matter, including this civil case,” his attorneys wrote.
Pagliano received limited “use” and “derivative use” immunity from the Justice Department, his lawyers wrote, a type of immunity that generally protects witnesses from having statements they make to investigators being used against them in any criminal case — with the exception of lies or false statements — while still enabling the government to prosecute using evidence it obtains independent of that testimony.
Judicial Watch has sought the testimony of Pagliano and several other current and former State Department aides about the 2009 creation of the private email system used by Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
The organization is challenging whether the State Department’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2013 on former Deputy Secretary of State Huma Abedin’s outside work as a paid consultant for a charitable foundation run by Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, included enough documents.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has granted the group’s request to question the aides. After Pagliano said last week that he would assert his Fifth Amendment right and decline to answer every question posed to him during a deposition, the judge gave him until Tuesday to reveal the immunity agreement.
