Tech who wiped Hillary's email archive with BleachBit pleads the Fifth; Bryan Pagliano doesn't show

Nope, no scandal here. It was just last week that the Washington Post editorial board argued that it was time to let Hillary Clinton’s “minor email scandal” go and focus instead on Donald Trump and his fitness to hold office. The House Oversight Committee disagreed, fortunately, and went ahead with a hearing Tuesday during which members of Clinton’s tech team were supposed to testify.

"This is one of the biggest breaches in the history of the State Department." – Rep. Jason Chaffetz #ClintonEmails pic.twitter.com/2QKhyeiqkA

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 13, 2016

We would have expected Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department staffer who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and who set up Clinton’s homebrew email server, to plead the Fifth (again), but he didn’t have the opportunity since he didn’t show, despite having been subpoenaed to appear. Chaffetz said that Pagliano would face (unspecified) consequences for “thumbing his nose at Congress.”

Rep. Chaffetz: "Mr. Pagliano has chosen to evade a subpoena." #ClintonEmails pic.twitter.com/WSK3Wt9Dw7

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 13, 2016

Clinton IT guy Bryan Pagliano, who has asserted 5th in past, is no-show at House Oversight cmte hearing.

— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 13, 2016

Bryan Pagliano, former Clinton staffer who helped setup private email server, fails to appear at House Oversight hearing, despite subpoena.

— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) September 13, 2016

Wow: ignoring a Congressional subpoena? Pagliano really doesn’t want to talk.

Neither did Platte River Networks technicians Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton. Combetta, who has been granted immunity from prosecution, is apparently the technician who had that “oh sh*t!” moment recounted in the FBI’s interview notes and deleted Clinton’s email archive — and then obliterated it with BleachBit — despite a protection order from Congress.

Nothing suspicious there. The only person who did feel chatty was Justin Cooper, the former White House aide to President Bill Clinton and employee of the Clinton Foundation who purchased Hillary Clinton’s first email server and registered the clintonemail.com domain. Cooper admitted that, no, he had no security clearance at the time he was performing IT work on the Clinton server, which had more than 2,000 classified documents on it.

.@jasoninthehouse: Mr. Cooper has described his role in managing Sec. Clinton’s private server as the “customer service face.”

— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) September 13, 2016

.@jasoninthehouse: When Mr. Cooper needed help upgrading the server for better service, he turned to Bryan Pagliano.

— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) September 13, 2016

Not only didn’t Cooper have security clearance; he also testified that he wasn’t an expert in communications security either.

Justin Cooper at House Oversight Hearing says attempts to hack Clinton's email server occurred with "some frequency." #MAMA #NeverHillary

— Jikary Jack (@JikaryJack) September 13, 2016

Listening to Mr Cooper's testimony to House Oversight Committee makes it CRYSTAL CLEAR that Clinton's private server was not for convenience

— Hillary for Prison (@HRC4Prison) September 13, 2016

https://twitter.com/Hydria_News/status/775724573924921344

So much for Clinton’s claim that she always took security seriously, even if she couldn’t recall that (C) stood for confidential.

Excerpts of the hearing have been posted to YouTube, but if nothing else, watch Rep. Jim Jordan declare, “No regular American can get away with the kind of behavior Secretary Clinton gets away with.”