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-- The above-mentioned Bryan Pagliano has announced he's taking the fifth in his Judicial Watch deposition. He's going to refuse to speak when deposed.The Hill:
Clinton IT aide to plead Fifth in email case"Taking the fifth" is an admission of guilt of something (who knows what?), but it's an absolute protection from prosecution by evidence from his own mouth. (The ability to "take the fifth," by the way, is important -- it's our protection against evidence produced by torture. Still, it's damning, not just of Pagliano, but of that whole crew.)
The man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton's private email server will assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions as part of an open records lawsuit against the State Department.Bryan Pagliano will decline to answer questions from Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group, during a deposition scheduled for Monday, his lawyers wrote in a court filing on Wednesday afternoon.
The move forecloses the possibility that Pagliano would break his months of silence about the server issue, even as scrutiny has intensified on his role.
Pagliano's lawyers told Judicial Watch more than a week ago that he would not be answering any questions, they claimed in their filing on Wednesday, and asked that it drop its subpoena. The organization refused.
Your second takeaway -- Pagliano thinks he can be prosecuted for something if he speaks about the Clinton email server in his FOIA deposition. Check the first story above to review what he can speak about.
There will perhaps be political consequences from this. Will there be legal consequences? Keep reading.
-- One of the laws that may have been broken is 18 U.S. Code 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information.
Note first that the information listed below doesn't require a formal "classified" designation to be relevant, and second, that "intent" is not necessary to trigger the law's penalties. "Gross negligence" is sufficient. Again, my emphasis below:
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer--Your third takeaway -- Unless this law doesn't apply for some other reason, it seems perfectly applicable for the reasons noted above. All sorts of State Department business and communications could be considered "relating to the national defense," including simple travel itineraries of top officials, such as President Obama's.
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
"Gross negligence" in allowing such documents to be "lost" or "stolen" is, under this law, a criminal act subject to fines, imprisonment, or both. If the server was hacked, broken into, the above law appears to apply.
Was This Law Actually Broken?
Were documents related to the national defense in fact stolen from Clinton's "home-brew" server through negligence? I think that's the piece we don't know. Will we ever find out? That's the other piece we don't know. Still, these data points have been on my mind since I discovered them.
(By the way, the list of laws that may have been broken, not to mention State Department practices and guidelines ignored, is proffered to be long, at least according to the Internet. I've seen a list, and this is just one item on it. It's also the one I find least controvertible, since the meaning of "classified" is a mine field, depending on how each law is written, and this law isn't limited to "classified" material. I don't envy the FBI in sorting through all this.)
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