Friday, March 04, 2016 7:26:52 PM
Immunity For Bryan Pagliano Will Help End The Hillary Clinton Email Inquiry
.. there has not been any suggestion that anyone will be indicted .. if anyone ever was that could be a problem
for the Clinton campaign, but bottom line is simply that this is, to date, simply still a security review by the FBI ..
Mar 2, 2016 @ 11:50 PM 61,714 views
Charles Tiefer Contributor
I cover government contracting, the Pentagon and Congress.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Bryan Pagliano, a former U.S. State Department employee, after leaving a House Benghazi Committee closed interview on Capitol
Hill, Sept. 10, 2015. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
For all the shrill attention that it will get, Bryan Pagliano’s acceptance of an offer of immunity .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-clinton-email-investigation-justice-department-grants-immunity-to-former-state-department-staffer/2016/03/02/e421e39e-e0a0-11e5-9c36-e1902f6b6571_story.html ..from the Department of Justice for his testimony will help end the Hillary Clinton .. http://www.forbes.com/profile/hillary-clinton/ .. email inquiry. The article in Huffington Post by H. A. Goodman that the Pagliano immunity hands Bernie Sanders the presidency is nonsense.
Pagliano, a former State Department employee, set up Clinton’s private email server in her home in New York in 2009 when she served as Secretary of State.
His testimony could be crucial to helping the FBI and the DOJ determine whether the handling of her State Department email traffic created a security violation or involved criminal offenses.
What does immunity represent? Does it mean that either Pagliano (or Clinton) are accused of offenses? Quite the opposite. Pagliano first invoked his Fifth Amendment rights because a House Republican-majority committee was hauling him in. I served as General Counsel (Acting) for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993-94, and continue to remain informed of its practices. Confronted with one of those committees, I think a witness like Pagliano would be very well advised to invoke the Fifth Amendment, because the committees act in a blatantly and aggressively partisan way and do not behave at all fairly with witnesses. He would be well advised to do what he did, and eventually give a full account, not to such a committee, but to the FBI and DOJ.
Immunity means the Justice Department must forego bringing a case against him, but if the DOJ thought they had a case against Pagliano, they would not grant him immunity. They would prosecute that case, or else make a plea deal which could include the grant of immunity. They are granting him immunity because there is no case they are foregoing, so, this way, he can and will give them evidence.
What about Clinton – does Pagliano’s immunity somehow count against her? Hardly. Again, it is only what it is. The whole country saw her on live television being questioned by a Republican-majority House Committee. They can decide about her from what they saw themselves.
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Pagliano could not give the FBI and DOJ an account without obtaining immunity. For one thing, if he had done so, a House committee could certainly argue that he had waived his rights and must now testify before them – or face contempt of Congress. The Republican House has been very free with such charges – it held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. There is an interesting legal argument about whether waiver before DOJ amounts to waiver before Congress, but Pagliano probably feels as eager to be tormented about that legal argument, before a House Republican-majority committee, as to face the Spanish Inquisition.
What will Pagliano’s testimony to the FBI and DOJ mean? Most likely, it will bring their inquiry nearer to an end. The emails apparently contain some kinds of information that are found “elsewhere,” although it is not clear whether “elsewhere” is in documents in agency files, the front page of the New York Times, or both. As part of its work, DOJ must figure out what the implications were of having such information on that server. Also, they must find out about the setting up of the server, which Pagliano helped with.
Clinton has said: “Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I’m sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.”
There is not space here for a complete reprise of the email issue. Suffice it that Clinton would have expected classified documents to get transmission through a different, separate system quite unconnected with her email. The fact that she never once saw, in her own email, a document with classified markings would have confirmed her in that belief. Whatever is said about how big a mistake that was, it was not intentional and does not reach the very, very selective and severe level to be indictable.
In any event, for all the shrill attention that it will get, immunity for Bryan Pagliano will help move the Hillary Clinton email inquiry toward an end – and be one less thing for her to worry about.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2016/03/02/immunity-for-bryan-pagliano-will-help-end-the-hillary-clinton-email-inquiry/#2fd0b8fc552d
.. there has not been any suggestion that anyone will be indicted .. if anyone ever was that could be a problem
for the Clinton campaign, but bottom line is simply that this is, to date, simply still a security review by the FBI ..
Mar 2, 2016 @ 11:50 PM 61,714 views
Charles Tiefer Contributor
I cover government contracting, the Pentagon and Congress.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Bryan Pagliano, a former U.S. State Department employee, after leaving a House Benghazi Committee closed interview on Capitol
Hill, Sept. 10, 2015. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
For all the shrill attention that it will get, Bryan Pagliano’s acceptance of an offer of immunity .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-clinton-email-investigation-justice-department-grants-immunity-to-former-state-department-staffer/2016/03/02/e421e39e-e0a0-11e5-9c36-e1902f6b6571_story.html ..from the Department of Justice for his testimony will help end the Hillary Clinton .. http://www.forbes.com/profile/hillary-clinton/ .. email inquiry. The article in Huffington Post by H. A. Goodman that the Pagliano immunity hands Bernie Sanders the presidency is nonsense.
Pagliano, a former State Department employee, set up Clinton’s private email server in her home in New York in 2009 when she served as Secretary of State.
His testimony could be crucial to helping the FBI and the DOJ determine whether the handling of her State Department email traffic created a security violation or involved criminal offenses.
What does immunity represent? Does it mean that either Pagliano (or Clinton) are accused of offenses? Quite the opposite. Pagliano first invoked his Fifth Amendment rights because a House Republican-majority committee was hauling him in. I served as General Counsel (Acting) for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993-94, and continue to remain informed of its practices. Confronted with one of those committees, I think a witness like Pagliano would be very well advised to invoke the Fifth Amendment, because the committees act in a blatantly and aggressively partisan way and do not behave at all fairly with witnesses. He would be well advised to do what he did, and eventually give a full account, not to such a committee, but to the FBI and DOJ.
Immunity means the Justice Department must forego bringing a case against him, but if the DOJ thought they had a case against Pagliano, they would not grant him immunity. They would prosecute that case, or else make a plea deal which could include the grant of immunity. They are granting him immunity because there is no case they are foregoing, so, this way, he can and will give them evidence.
What about Clinton – does Pagliano’s immunity somehow count against her? Hardly. Again, it is only what it is. The whole country saw her on live television being questioned by a Republican-majority House Committee. They can decide about her from what they saw themselves.
Recommended by Forbes
Pagliano could not give the FBI and DOJ an account without obtaining immunity. For one thing, if he had done so, a House committee could certainly argue that he had waived his rights and must now testify before them – or face contempt of Congress. The Republican House has been very free with such charges – it held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. There is an interesting legal argument about whether waiver before DOJ amounts to waiver before Congress, but Pagliano probably feels as eager to be tormented about that legal argument, before a House Republican-majority committee, as to face the Spanish Inquisition.
What will Pagliano’s testimony to the FBI and DOJ mean? Most likely, it will bring their inquiry nearer to an end. The emails apparently contain some kinds of information that are found “elsewhere,” although it is not clear whether “elsewhere” is in documents in agency files, the front page of the New York Times, or both. As part of its work, DOJ must figure out what the implications were of having such information on that server. Also, they must find out about the setting up of the server, which Pagliano helped with.
Clinton has said: “Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I’m sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.”
There is not space here for a complete reprise of the email issue. Suffice it that Clinton would have expected classified documents to get transmission through a different, separate system quite unconnected with her email. The fact that she never once saw, in her own email, a document with classified markings would have confirmed her in that belief. Whatever is said about how big a mistake that was, it was not intentional and does not reach the very, very selective and severe level to be indictable.
In any event, for all the shrill attention that it will get, immunity for Bryan Pagliano will help move the Hillary Clinton email inquiry toward an end – and be one less thing for her to worry about.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2016/03/02/immunity-for-bryan-pagliano-will-help-end-the-hillary-clinton-email-inquiry/#2fd0b8fc552d
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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