Meanwhile, the hearings go on
Three witnesses ordered to testify Tuesday before a House committee investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server asserted their constitutional rights against self-incrimination and did not appear or refused to answer questions.
Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department computer specialist tasked with setting up Clinton’s server, did not attend the Republican-led hearing. His attorney said in a letter to the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Pagliano will continue to assert his constitutional right not to testify…
Two officials from Denver-based Platte River Networks appeared before the committee but invoked their constitutional right not to testify. Bill Thornton and Paul Combetta were excused from the session. In June 2013, after Clinton had left office, the server was moved from her Chappaqua, New York, home to a data center in northern New Jersey, where it was maintained by the Platte River Networks.
One witness, Justin Cooper, a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton, is answering the committee’s questions. Chaffetz said Cooper purchased the first server used by Clinton and registered the clintonemail.com domain name. Cooper also helped set up Clinton’s mobile communications.
Cooper told the committee that he did not have a security clearance during the period he was performing this work.
Well, why would he need a security clearance? After all, there was never anything classified on the server (do I need a sarcasm tag there?).
I don’t think many voters are following the details of this story, though. I think that by this time most people have a sense of the general picture and have made up their minds about it. Hillary’s supporters feel that it’s all a politically-motivated tempest in a teapot, or else they think she handled it badly but they forgive Hillary anything because she’s a Democrat running against the Demon Donald. Those who oppose Hillary consider this just part of a bad pattern that’s been going on with her for many, many years.
Congress is toothless, and the witnesses know it- Congress pulled its own teeth long ago.
If you really want to get to the bottom of these scandals, it will take, at a minimum, a US Attorney with the power of subpoena and the ability to jail people for contempt.
My wife didn’t like my solution.
Pagliano received immunity. How can he invoke the 5th if he has immunity?
Sigh, YW is correct. There is no stick to compel those involved to be truthful. The Clintons have always managed to stonewall while the msm provides cover. If not for the blue dress Slick Willy would have skated without a scandal. But it turned out that his affair with ML was irresistible to the msm. Every other scandal dating back to Little Rock has been stamped as a vast right wing conspiracy.
You are correct that most voters will be unmoved by this information, and those who somehow remain undecided are probably not paying that much attention.
But it’s a close election, and a few percent swing will matter, and more importantly, there is history and precedent to consider.
Doesn’t everyone who has followed this story know that calling these folks to testify before this committee at this time is just a (I want to choose the words characterizing this action very carefully) political move to keep the Hillary email story “in the news”? I am not referring to the vast right wing conspiracy here, just good electoral politics.
Taking the Fifth taints (pun intended) the person taking it. The Committee knew they would do it. Classically, folks say: “If they aren’t guilty of something, why do they have to take the Fifth?”
On the other hand, the Committee issuing the subpeona to the FBI for the redacted material the FBI didn’t release is motivated by a real desire to know the facts.
Pagliano was granted immunity from prosecution for any testimony he gave at the time. Later testimony in another tribunal is not covered, so even if he said exactly the same thing he could be prosecuted for it.
Unfortunately, neo is correct in stating that only political junkies care at this point unless a smoking gun in a dumpster fire is found.
“Hillary’s supporters feel that it’s all a politically-motivated tempest in a teapot, or else they think she handled it badly but they forgive Hillary anything because she’s a Democrat running against the Demon Donald.” neo
It would be the same, if it were ‘crazy’ Cruz or ‘reckless’ Rubio. Any deviation from political correctness, including a failure of loyalty to the ‘right’ party’ is proof of being part of the “basket of deplorables”, racist, homophobic, xenophobic… “take your pick”.
Make no mistake, as far as leftists are concerned, we’re all “irredeemable”. Hillary’s ‘half’ of Trump’s supporters qualification was an attempt to seem ‘reasonable’.
Jean, watch this: FBI is hiding/redacting information to prevent Congress from seeing all of the Clinton interview, in a flagrant violation of our Constitution. Congressman Chaffetz pins an FBI guy to the floor about it. Watch it to the end: this gets good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qct5BBRjC8Y
This is a Constitutional crisis, and the Leftists with Bylines are burying it like a dog burying a bone.
Geoffrey Britain has it right.
Well, I would make one correction:
“Any statement or action which, by omission of full content, misinterpretation or blatant misstatement, editing or other manipulation, which can be characterized as deviation from political correctness…”
Beverly Says:
September 13th, 2016 at 8:56 pm
Jean, watch this: FBI is hiding/redacting information to prevent Congress from seeing all of the Clinton interview, in a flagrant violation of our Constitution. Congressman Chaffetz pins an FBI guy to the floor about it. Watch it to the end: this gets good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qct5BBRjC8Y
This is a Constitutional crisis, and the Leftists with Bylines are burying it like a dog burying a bone.
* * *
I loved that clip.
We need to make bumper stickers with Chaffetz’ repeated question to the FBI man, who he thoroughly schooled in law and Constitutional privileges:
“What information do you believe that Congress does not have the right to see?”
— making the point as well that he, and his committee, were vested by Congress with the right to see classified information, and then serving a subpeona on the FBI-guy when he continued stonewalling.
Beautiful.
I don’t grasp why this is allowed to happen. These committees have the power to grant prosecutorial immunity for testimony. I’m betting the amnesty for associated crimes for which they could take the fifth could be narrowly tailored enough to force them to tell the truth or go to jail for obstruction.
Yet this rarely seems to happen.
One might almost think these committees are obstructing justice themselves.