Ex-DoJ Official: Missing Clinton Emails 'Stinks to High Heavens'
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
A former Department of Justice official said he questioned how emails from Hillary Clinton technology staffer Bryan Pagliano went missing from the State Department.
The State Department announced May 9 that it had found no email files that covered the time when Pagliano was on staff during Clinton's tenure as secretary of State.
"The whole thing stinks to high heavens," Dan Metcalfe said in a report by LawNewz.com.
Metcalfe is the founding director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy. He held that job from 1981 until 2007, during which time he oversaw the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act in the executive branch.
"If it is true that federal records directly documenting his work no longer exist, then that is awfully coincidental, to put it most charitably," Metcalfe said in the Lawnewz report. "Especially given the nature of his work and the role he has played in the Clinton e-mail controversy."
"It is more than ironic," Metcalfe continued, "given what appear to be 'missing' are e-mails."
At issue in the probe that involves 147 FBI agents is whether Clinton willfully put emails labeled "top secret" or higher at risk of security breaches. Clinton used a private email server and a BlackBerry phone device that are vulnerable to hacking attacks, according to a Time Magazine report.
The Wall Street Journal reported in September 2015 that Pagliano invoked the Fifth Amendment when he turned over the email files, which allows a person constitutional protection to avoid incriminating themselves.
Metcalfe, in the LawNewz report, took issue with that action.
"For someone who has taken the Fifth regarding his government activity, it is more than suspicious that his agency suddenly determines that the records that you would ordinarily expect it to have maintained about his work are just not there," he said.
Metcalfe noted three possible conclusions: the records weren't properly created and preserved, they were improperly disposed of, or the search for the records, "was a poor one."
The former Justice Department official said to LawNewz that he could not fathom how Clinton's staff believed their apparent actions would not be found out.
"It is difficult to imagine how anyone associated with Clinton's staff in any way could envision getting away with something like this."
Other officials agreed with Metcalfe's statements, according to LawNewz.
"I don't buy the explanation," Anne Weismann, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, said.
Washington, DC legal expert Mark S. Zaid said it was a "fiasco" and "beyond embarrassing for the State Department."
Metcalfe wrote an editorial for Politico in 2015 in which he said that Clinton knew what she was doing and, "at minimum, it was a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act."
Nevertheless, Metcalfe said in his 2015 Politico editorial, he would vote for Clinton for president.
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