Hillary Clinton private server

2015-09-02-WP-staffer-who-worked-on-clintons-private-e-mail-server-faces-subpoena

Staffer who worked on Clinton’s private e-mail server faces subpoena
By Carol D. Leonnig and Tom Hamburger September 2 at 8:49 PM
Washington Post, 2015-09-02

A former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail server tried this week to fend off a subpoena to testify before Congress, saying he would assert his constitutional right not to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself.

The move by Bryan Pagliano,
who had worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign
before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009,
came in a Monday letter from his lawyer to the House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The letter cited the ongoing FBI inquiry into the security of Clinton’s e-mail system, and it quoted a Supreme Court ruling in which justices described the Fifth Amendment as protecting “innocent men . . . ‘who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.’ ”

...

“In response to questions . . .
Mr. Pagliano’s legal counsel told the committee yesterday that
he would plead the Fifth
to any and all questions if he were compelled to testify,”
a spokesperson for committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement.

...

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), complained yesterday that Gowdy unilaterally issued the subpoena. He said the subpoena of a low-level aide is one of several signs that Gowdy is using the committee for the political purpose of trying to smear a Democratic presidential candidate.

“Although multiple legal experts agree there is no evidence of criminal activity, it is certainly understandable that this witness’s attorneys advised him to assert his Fifth Amendment rights, especially given the onslaught of wild and unsubstantiated accusations by Republican presidential candidates, members of Congress and others based on false leaks about the investigation,” Cummings said. “Their insatiable desire to derail Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign at all costs has real consequences for any serious congressional effort.”

{Hack, hack, hack.
Cover it up, Dems.
Show how committed to transparency you are.
What are you trying to hide?]

2015-09-03-Yahoo-Isikoff-clinton-aide-has-rebuffed-fbi-and-state-department

Exclusive: Former Clinton aide has rebuffed FBI and State Department investigators in email probe
by Michael Isikoff
Yahoo.com, 2015-09-03

The former aide to Hillary Clinton
who helped set up and maintain her private email server
has declined to talk to the FBI and the State Department inspector general’s office,
as well as a congressional committee,
invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself,
sources familiar with the investigation confirmed to Yahoo News.

The move by Bryan Pagliano, who served on Clinton’s 2008 campaign
and later as a technology officer in the State Department,
to decline to cooperate in two federal probes
considerably raises the stakes in the Clinton email investigation,
the sources said.
It confronts the Justice Department with
a decision about whether to grant him immunity in exchange for his testimony —
a move that could be taken only were the department to escalate the probe
into a full-scale criminal investigation, the sources said.

Pagliano’s decision this week to decline to testify before a congressional committee investigating the death of the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi was first reported Wednesday night by the Washington Post. But Pagliano’s earlier rebuffs to federal investigators, including the FBI, have not been previously reported.

Pagliano, who maintained the private email server in the basement of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., was first contacted by the State Department inspector general’s office in June, the sources said. The inspector general was at that point in the early stages of its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official business.

But Pagliano — a potential key figure in the probe — declined to speak to the inspector general’s investigators, informing them through his Washington lawyer, Mark MacDougall, that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right, the sources said.

Then, in late July, the State Department inspector general and the inspector general for the director of national intelligence referred the matter to the FBI counterintelligence division to determine if classified information was mishandled through the use of the private email server after finding evidence that classified information was communicated on emails sent through the server. But officials stressed at that time that the inquiry was an intelligence probe and not a criminal investigation.

At that point, the FBI also sought to question Pagliano and he again refused. His refusal to answer questions was communicated by his lawyer to senior lawyers in the counterintelligence section of the Justice Department’s national security division — one of whom had previously been in charge of the investigation into former CIA Director David Petraeus, the sources said.

MacDougall, Pagliano’s lawyer, declined any comment, and sources note that is not uncommon for lawyers with clients in sensitive investigations to invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Even if their clients are not the targets of the investigation, lawyers argue that the clients could be confronted with documents or questions they are not prepared for and inadvertently subject themselves to charges that they are not being truthful.

But sources familiar with the Clinton probe said Pagliano is a potentially central figure who may be one of the few who can answer key questions about why the private email server was set up, what he was told by Clinton about its purpose, who had access to it and what protections existed to guard against hackers or any other outside intrusions.

Pagliano had served as information technology director for Clinton’s 2008 campaign. He later moved to the State Department office of the chief technology officer but continued to maintain access to the private server “remotely” as well as paying occasional visits to the Clintons’ home to help maintain it, the sources said.

On Aug. 11, the special committee investigating Benghazi, which first uncovered Clinton’s use of a private email address and server, subpoenaed Pagliano to turn over documents and testify at a hearing on Sept. 10. But this week, MacDougall wrote its chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a letter informing him that his client would not answer questions, citing the fact that the issue “is a subject of investigative activity by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice.”

“While we understand that Mr. Pagliano’s response to this subpoena may be controversial in the current political environment, we hope that the members of the Select Committee will respect our client’s right to invoke the protections of the Constitution,” MacDougall and two other lawyers working with him wrote.

Asked about the matter at a press stakeout today, Gowdy said he understood why clients invoke the Fifth Amendment, “but you’ll have to ask him why he did. And you’re free to glean whatever inference you want from the fact that he did it.”

In a statement today, a Clinton campaign spokesman said the former secretary has urged Pagliano to cooperate in the probe.

“We have been confident from the beginning that Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email was allowed and that she did not send or receive anything marked classified, facts confirmed by the State Department and the Inspector General,” said campaign spokesman Nick Merrill in a statement.

“She has made every effort to answer questions and be as helpful as possible, and has encouraged her aides, current and former, to do the same, including Bryan Pagliano,” Merrill added.

He also noted that two of Clinton’s former aides, including former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, are due to testify in closed sessions before the Benghazi committee this week. Mills’ session is scheduled for today.

2015-09-05-WP-clintons-personally-paid-state-department-staffer-to-maintain-server

Clintons personally paid State Department staffer to maintain server
By Rosalind S. Helderman and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post, 2015-09-05, Page A1 [2015-09-06]

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her family personally paid a State Department staffer to maintain the private e-mail server she used while heading the agency, according to an official from Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The unusual arrangement helped Clinton retain personal control over the system that she used for her public and private duties and that has emerged as an issue for her campaign. But, according to the campaign official, it also ensured that taxpayer dollars were not spent on a private server that was shared by Clinton, her husband and their daughter as well as aides to the former president.

That State Department staffer, Bryan Pagliano, told a congressional committee this week that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination instead of testifying about the setup.

The private employment of Pagliano provides a new example of the ways that Clinton — who occupied a unique role as a Cabinet secretary who was also a former and potentially future presidential candidate — hired staff to work simultaneously for her in public and private capacities.

Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, a close confidant who served as deputy chief of staff, both spent time working for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation or the Clintons personally.

Pagliano’s employment by the Clintons was confirmed by a campaign official in response to questions from The Washington Post. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. A campaign spokesman declined to provide a statement.

Pagliano had served as the IT director of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and then worked for her political action committee.

The Clintons paid Pagliano $5,000 for “computer services” prior to his joining the State Department, according to a financial disclosure form he filed in April 2009.

But even after arriving at State in May 2009, Pagliano continued to be paid by the Clintons to maintain the server, which was in their Chappaqua, N.Y., home, according to the campaign official and another person familiar with the arrangement. That person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation.

The private pay arrangement has not previously been reported. The State Department has declined to answer questions about whether the private system was widely known within the agency or officially approved.

Asked in early August about whether Pagliano had been paid privately to maintain the server, a State Department official said that the agency had “found no evidence that he ever informed the department that he had outside income.”

This week, a different State Department official said he could not clarify Pagliano’s pay situation, citing “ongoing reviews and investigations” of Clinton’s e-mail setup.

Pagliano did not list the outside income in the required personal financial disclosures he filed each year. The State Department has said Pagliano concluded his full-time service in February 2013, which coincides with Clinton’s departure as secretary. He remains a State Department contractor doing work on “mobile and remote computing functions,” according to a State Department spokesman.

Pagliano’s attorney, Mark MacDougall, declined to comment.

MacDougall sent a letter Monday to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which had subpoenaed Pagliano, informing the panel that his client would invoke his constitutional rights not to answer questions.

There are multiple congressional inquiries into Clinton’s e-mail use, and the FBI is looking into the security of the setup.

[Clinton, using private server, wrote and sent e-mails now deemed classified]

A spokeswoman for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was inquiring about Pagliano’s outside employment, said that Pagliano’s lawyer informed the committee that his client would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights.

Lawmakers interested in hearing Pagliano’s account of the server’s setup and security protocols are considering whether to offer him immunity in exchange for his testimony. If they take the step, Pagliano would be compelled to appear.

State Department officials have declined to explain which agency officials knew about Clinton’s server and whether any had raised questions or concerns about how it was being handled.

“My unsatisfactory but necessary answer to that is, again, that’s not our role in this process to really answer that question publicly; that there are reviews and investigations underway that will look at possibly some of these issues is for other entities to speak to,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters this week.

Asked by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Friday whether anyone in her inner circle ever expressed concern about the setup, Clinton responded, “I was not thinking a lot when I got in.”

“There was so much work to be done,” Clinton continued. “We had so many problems around the world. I didn’t really stop and think — what — what kind of e-mail system will there be?”

E-mails released this week show that members of the State Department IT department’s help desk were unaware of the setup and sought information about why a correspondent was getting a “fatal error” when sending messages to Clinton’s address. The tech support team “didn’t know it was you,” an aide e-mailed Clinton.

Federal regulations allow employees at Pagliano’s level to have outside employment but require that the extra income not exceed 15 percent of their government salary. Employees must also ensure that their outside work not create a conflict of interest with their government job.

By early 2013, as Clinton was preparing to conclude her time as secretary of state, she was looking to upgrade the system’s security and durability, people briefed on the server have said. The system had crashed for days during Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, disrupting her e-mail abilities.

To find a company to take over for Pagliano, the Clintons turned to Tania Neild, a technology broker whose company, InfoGrate, is in Bronxville, N.Y., about 20 miles from their home.

In January 2013, weeks before Clinton’s departure from Foggy Bottom, Neild alerted a small Denver-based technology firm, Platte River Networks, to a possible contract, according to Andy Boian, a spokesman for the tech firm.

Boian said Neild’s notice included no reference to the Clintons and the company submitted a proposal for the work without knowing the identity of the famous potential client.

[Does that sound likely? Plausible? Hmmm.]

Boian said the company learned that it might be working for the former president and former secretary of state in mid-
February of 2013, when executives were told that they were finalists for the work. The Clintons hired Platte River that June. The company has said it moved the Clintons’ server at that time from the couple’s home to a data storage facility in New Jersey, where it sat until it was turned over to the FBI last month.

Neild said in an interview with The Post that she could not confirm that she worked for the Clintons because all of her clients have nondisclosure agreements about their work.

But she said her business is helping wealthy families manage private servers and e-mail systems, and she confirmed that she works regularly with Platte River Networks.

“They are a company with the utmost integrity,” Neild said.

2015-10-13-BusinessInsiderAu-cyber-experts-and-hillary-clintons-email

'Like inviting spies over to dinner':
Cyber experts are stunned by Hillary Clinton's security choices
by Natasha Bertrand
Business Insider, 2015-10-13

[Also available at Business Insider Australia]

Cyber security experts are sceptical of the companies Hillary Clinton chose to oversee her private email server, which allegedly contained classified and top secret national security information from when she served as Secretary of State.

After she left the State Department in 2013, Clinton — now under fire for using a personal email account for work-related correspondences while serving as America’s top diplomat — hired at least three different private firms to manage different aspects of her server.

The firms included Platte River Networks, a Denver-based firm that hosted her server; SECNAP, which sold her a firewall program known as CloudJacket SMB to detect hackers; and Datto, Inc., a cloud storage company that backed up Clinton’s emails in case her server crashed.

The companies, which are relatively unknown, have been described by some cyber security experts as odd choices for such a high-level public figure.

“I’ve never heard of SECNAP or CloudJacket SMB, which says a lot right there,” Michael Borohovski, CEO and founder of TinFoil Security, told Business Insider. “But the ‘SMB’ in ‘CloudJacket SMB’ means Small Medium Business, which Hillary Clinton is not.”

“She was evidently using the cheapest plan of this tool, which is a run-of-the-mill firewall to begin with,” Borohovski added. “If you’re Secretary of State, or running for President, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Joe Loomis, CEO of CyberSponse, hadn’t heard of SECNAP or its threat monitoring tool, either.

“It’s pretty shocking,” Loomis told BI. “Why entrust this small, unknown company with protecting the data of a former Secretary of State?”

...

“There’s only so much I can control,” she said. “I can’t control the technical aspects of it. I’m not by any means a technical expert. I relied on people who were.”

But because Clinton made a conscious decision to bypass the State Department’s server — and the millions the government has spent to protect it — in favour of her own risky setup, her ignorance of the technological particulars a poor excuse, Loomis said.

“The fact that Clinton chose to use her personal email instead of a .gov account shows that she obviously doesn’t understand security,” Loomis added. “What she did is like inviting spies over to dinner — every device connected to the internet is an opportunity for them to collect intelligence.”

“This world is full of cyber warfare, and your computer is a part of that warzone.”

[Yeah, but so what.
Surely she wouldn't be so careless with the nation's security,
would she?
Surely she wouldn't pick less than overwhelmingly competent people
to staff her administration would she?
Surely she wouldn't pick people on the basis of political correctness
rather than technical competence,
would she?]

...

2015-10-21-FoxBusiness-doj-officials-fear-foreign-telecoms-intercepted-clinton-emails-server

FBN Exclusive:
DOJ Officials Fear Foreign Telecoms Hacked Clinton Emails, Server
By Elizabeth MacDonald
Fox Business News, 2015-10-21

[A fabulously detailed, informative analysis of
what can be gleaned by outsiders about
the security, or rather, lack thereof, of Hillary's communications practices.
Kudos to Fox News for this report.
And I challenge anyone to claim that such information is
"just politics, just an effort to bring Hillary down".
Rather, it is critical information for evaluating
Hillary's level of judgment.
Do Democrats care at all about that?
Evidently not.
Hey, if she panders to their coalition,
who cares about how she lets the nation's security slip?

Can't the Democratic Party find a candidate for president
who will pander adequately to their coalition
but also exercise good judgment when it comes to security matters?]

Officials close to the matter at the Department of Justice are concerned the emails Hillary Clinton sent from her personal devices while overseas on business as U.S. Secretary of State were breached by foreign telecoms in the countries she visited—a list which includes China.

“Her emails could have easily been hacked into by telecoms in these countries. They got the emails first, and then routed them back to her home server. They could have hacked into both,” one Justice Department official close to the matter says.

Another Justice Department official adds: “Those telecommunications companies over there often have government workers in there. That telecom in that foreign country could then follow the trail of emails back to her server in the U.S. and break into the server” remotely over the Internet. At various points in this process, there were multiple entry points to hack into Clinton’s server to steal information, as well as eavesdrop, the Justice Department officials say.

This is the first indication that officials at the Justice Department are concerned that foreign telecom workers may have broken into Clinton’s emails and home server. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating the national security issues surrounding Clinton’s emails and server.

The Justice Department officials also used the words “reckless", “stunning,” and “unbelievable” in discussing the controversy swirling around Clinton’s use of a private, nongovernment email account, as well as her use of a personal Blackberry (BBRY), an Apple (AAPL) iPad, and home server while U.S. Secretary of State. The officials did not indicate they have any knowledge of a breach at this point.

As for the effort to designate Clinton’s emails as classified or unclassified, the Justice Department officials agreed that, as one put it:
“Every email she sent is classified because she herself is classified, because she is both Secretary of State and a former first lady.”

[That statement requires limiting.
Surely her emails regarding her personal life were and are unclassified.
But her emails sent or received in her official position as U.S. Secretary of State
also surely deserve some degree of protection from foreign snooping.
The fact that Hillary seems totally oblivious to this rock-solid fact
by itself indicates how unqualified she is to be U.S. president.
What errors of judgment could she make in such a larger stage,
especially given her love of secrecy
(from U.S. eyes, but, de facto,
not from sophisticated foreign surveillance methods and agencies!)?
What screw-ups will she be able to make as POTUS?
Lots.]

In addition, there’s a growing belief among cyber security experts at web security places like Venafi and Data Clone Labs that Clinton’s emails were unprotected in the first three months of her tenure in 2009 as the nation’s top diplomat, based on Internet scans of her server Venafi conducted at that time.

“For the first three months of Secretary Clinton’s term in office, from early January to late March, access to her home server was not encrypted or authenticated with a digital certificate,” Kevin Bocek, vice president of security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi tells FOX Business. “That opens the risk that Clinton’s user name and password were exposed and captured, particularly in places she traveled to at this time, like China or Egypt. And that raises issues of national security,” adding “Attackers could have eavesdropped on communications, particularly in places like China, where the Internet and telecom infrastructure are built to do that.”

...

Secure communications and devices are routine in the federal government. For example, President Barack Obama received a secure Blackberry from the National Security Agency after he was elected, a former top NSA official tells FOX Business.

“I could not recall that I ever heard that a secure Blackberry was provided to Hillary Clinton. No one else can either,” the former NSA official says, adding, “There is no way her calls were properly secured if she used her [personal] Blackberry.” Blackberry declined comment.

The former NSA official says the same issue is at play for Clinton’s iPad. “While there have been recent advances in securing iPhones and iPads, these were not available, in my opinion, when she was Secretary of State and there would have to be a record that she sought permission to use them with encryption,” the former NSA official says.

When traveling overseas, U.S. secretaries of states use secure phones that ensure end-to-end encryption, and in some cases, mutual authentication of the parties calling, the former NSA official said. Communications are conducted via secured satellite, digital networks or Internet telephony.

“I think I can say, with some confidence, that once any decent foreign intelligence service discovered she was using her personal phone and iPad, she would be targeted and it would be a high priority operation,” the former NSA official said, adding, “if the calls were unencrypted, it would be no challenge at all while she was overseas -- they just have to get to the nearest cell tower.”

[Hey, Fox Business News:
How about asking that "former top NSA official"
if NSA knew about all this in real time,
while she was Secretary of State,
and if so, what they did about it?
It is a fact that NSA has (or at least used to have)
overall responsibility for COMSEC (communications security) in the U.S. government.

NSA has access to the National Security Council through, I suppose,
either DoD or the DNI.
I would certainly think that Hillary's communications practices were reportable information.
But that's just my opinion.
What does NSA think?
And what did they do?]

...

The first three months of her tenure as Secretary of State would have been an ideal time for hackers to break in, cyber security experts say.

Specifically, experts point to work done by cyber security experts at Venafi, which has revealed a three-month gap in security for Clinton’s home server after the Palo Alto, Calif. firm’s team had conducted routine, “non-intrusive Internet scanning” in January 2009.

Venafi’s Bocek tells FOX Business that
he and his team had picked up Clinton’s domain, clintonemail.com, at that time,
and found that her home server had not been issued a digital certificate.

That means email traffic to and from her server was unprotected from early January to late March 2009.
During that time, Clinton traveled as U.S. Secretary of State to China, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Belgium, Switzerland, and Turkey.

“It also means anyone accessing her home server, including Clinton and other people, would have unencrypted access, including from devices and via web browsers,” says Bocek. “This means that during the first three months of Secretary Clinton’s term in office, web browser, smartphone, and tablet communications would not have been encrypted.”

[Again, if the private firm Venafi knew about Clinton's domain,
how the hell could NSA not know about it?]

...

If cyber hackers broke into Clinton’s server,
they also could have easily tricked it into handing over
usernames, passwords, or other sensitive information, Bocek noted.

“The concern is that log-on credentials could have been compromised during this time, especially given travel to China and elsewhere,” Bocek says opening the door to more lapses. “As we've seen with so many other breaches, to long-term, under-the-radar compromise by adversaries, hacks that Clinton and her team may not be aware of.”

Bocek adds: “Essentially, the cyber hacker would have looked to Clinton’s server like it was Secretary Clinton emailing.”

...

Martin C. Libicki, a senior management scientist and cyber expert at Rand Corp., says that security on Clinton’s devices could have been higher than feared. But he says that, while the Blackberry device does have strong encryption, once Clinton zoomed emails from her Blackberry through the foreign telecom networks during those first three months of her tenure, “it was much easier to hack both the device and the server then.”

Venafi’s team, which included analysts Hari Nair and Gavin Hill, found Clinton and/or her team did eventually purchase digital certificates for the server and the clintonemail.com domain name starting in March 2009.

Victor added: “But the question that needed to be asked then was, once the certificate was installed, did Clinton and her team warn anyone she had emailed during those first three months about the poor security during that time, did they warn them to reset their security passwords on all their devices?”

[Think the Washington Post is capable of, or interested in, this type of sophisticated, knowledgeable reporting?]

2015-12-24-Fox-Brown-Herridge-clinton-aide-key-focus-in-fbi-server-investigation

Clinton aide key focus in FBI server investigation
By Pamela Browne, Catherine Herridge
Fox News, 2015-12-24

More than 100 days after he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying before the House committee investigating the Benghazi terrorist attack, a key Hillary Clinton aide is at the center of the separate and ongoing investigation by the FBI into Clinton’s use of a private unsecured server while she was secretary of state.

That former staffer, Bryan Pagliano, set up the controversial private email server in Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Pagliano is believed to be the only witness publicly identified during the politically charged hearings on Benghazi to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

...

As part of invoking his Fifth Amendment right,
Pagliano is also invoking the so-called act-of-production privilege.
Since 1984, according to a review by Fox News,
the privilege has been used in 103 federal or state cases.

A person can invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against the production of documents only where
the act of producing the documents is incriminating in itself.
According to a legal review by Fox News,
this privilege applies when
producing the documents – as opposed to their contents -- to the government
is entitled to Fifth Amendment protection.

This assertion is tantamount to the defendant's testimony that
the documents exist, are authentic and are in his possession.

The privilege has been invoked before by a Clinton associate.
Webb Hubbell, Hillary Clinton's former law partner when she worked at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas,
argued for an "act-of-production privilege" during the federal investigation into the collapse of Madison Guaranty, a failed savings and loan.
Hubbell followed Bill and Hillary Clinton into the White House to become an associate attorney general, the third-ranking member of the Justice Department.
He was convicted in 1995 and served 18 months in federal prison for his role in the failure of that savings and loan which later became known as the "Whitewater scandal."

Pagliano initially invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer 19 pages of questions from the House Select Committee on Benghazi...

...

As for the ongoing and separate FBI investigation into Clinton's emails, no one is authorized to speak on the record but Fox News is told by two intelligence sources that the "Bureau (FBI) has a solid team on the case" and
does not want to appear to be interfering with "the country's political process."

...

2015-12-24-DailyCaller-clintons-it-guru-said-to-be-focus-of-fbi-in-email-probe

Clinton’s IT Guru Said To Be Focus Of FBI In Email Probe
by Mark Tapscott
Daily Caller, 2015-12-24

...

Earlier this year, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock exclusively reported Sept. 5, 2015, that Pagliano had no national security experience and may have received a 55 percent pay hike after Clinton left the State Department in 2013.

...

“Pagliano was hired as a GS-15 even though he had no national security experience or security clearance,” Pollock said. Pagliano was initially paid $140,000 annually but that was reduced to $136,000 per year in 2011 and 2012 for unknown reasons.

The Daily Caller News Foundation has sued the State Department in federal court after the government failed to produce documentation that Clinton and her key aides completed mandatory training in protecting classified information when transmitting it digitally.

There are also questions about Pagliano’s compensation and employment status in the nearly three years since Clinton’s tenure ended as the nation’s chief diplomat, according to Pollock.

“In February 2013, the same month Hillary left as Secretary of State, Pagliano’s GS-15 employee status ended and he joined Gartner, Inc. a global IT company, according to his LinkedIn web page. Gartner has received 176 contracts and subcontracts from the State Department since 2007 collectively worth more than $14 million,” Pollock reported.

“While the State Department refused to disclose Pagliano’s contractor or any other details about his current or past employment status, federal contracting data bases show that on January 3, 2013, the State Department awarded Gartner $212,871.29 for an employee to work in the IRM where Pagliano remains despite having left the firm last November,” Pollock said.

2016

2016-03-03-WP-in-clinton-email-investigation-justice-department-grants-immunity-to-former-state-department-staffer

Justice Dept. grants immunity to staffer who set up Clinton email server
By Adam Goldman
Washington Post, 2016-03-03The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.

The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.

As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents are likely to want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said.

...

I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general of the intelligence community, has indicated that some of the material intelligence officials have reviewed contained information that was classified at the time it was sent; the State Department has indicated that it has not analyzed whether the material should have been marked classified when it was sent, only whether it requires classification before being released now.

...

2016-03-03-WP-what-does-a-former-staffers-immunity-deal-mean-for-hillary-clinton

What does a former staffer’s immunity deal mean for Hillary Clinton?
By Matt Zapotosky
Washington Post, 2016-03-03

The revelation that the Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staff member who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server is a likely indication that the investigation is nearing a conclusion, but should not be read as a sign that the leading Democratic presidential candidate is going to face criminal charges, legal experts said.

That Bryan Pagliano — a 2008 presidential campaign worker who set up the server in Clinton’s home — will avoid charges as he cooperates with FBI agents is a significant, if incremental, development, according to former federal prosecutors and white-collar defense lawyers who have been following the case.

It could mean that Pagliano, concerned about his legal exposure, might implicate others, including Clinton. But it also could be an indication that agents and prosecutors are winding down an inquiry that won’t result in charges, said Justin Shur, a former deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section who now works in private practice at the MoloLamken firm.

“I don’t know that I would necessarily jump to the conclusion that this person has ‘flipped,’ and now they’re going to say a bunch of incriminating things about other people,” Shur said, adding that the agents could simply be making sure they have spoken to everyone relevant to the investigation.

...

Edward B. MacMahon Jr., a lawyer who represented [Jeffrey] Sterling and Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui,
said that although prosecutors probably could charge Clinton,
politics may prevent them from doing so.
Justice Department guidelines, he said,
discourage prosecutors from bringing cases in such a way that they influence elections.

[Yeah, right. I wonder if Ted Stevens, if he were still alive,
would agree with that.]

“Almost anybody else already would have been receiving a target letter,” MacMahon said.
“Of that, there isn’t any question in my mind.”

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