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A former State Department IT expert has refused to answer questions about his work on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, keeping its operations shrouded in mystery. Bryan Pagliano’s laywers have said that he would remain silent during a deposition with the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, originally scheduled for Monday but now delayed until further notice. His decision increases the odds that Clinton herself will be forced to testify in the case. And, because of quirks of the legal system, his decision to stay quiet could be seen as an implicit confirmation that he or the State Department had done something...

Full title: Federal Judge Orders Clinton IT Witness To Produce Reported Immunity Agreement, Legal Basis for Fifth Amendment Claims (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced that a court order was issued by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan requiring Bryan Pagliano, the Clinton State Department IT official who reportedly provided support for the Clinton email system, to produce to the court his reported immunity agreement and the legal basis for the Fifth Amendment claims he planned to assert in Judicial Watch’s discovery into the Clinton email system. The order delays Mr. Pagliano’s deposition, which had been scheduled for Monday, June 6....

The man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton’s private email server will assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refuse to answer questions as part of an open records lawsuit against the State Department. Bryan Pagliano will decline to answer questions from Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group, during a deposition scheduled for Monday, his lawyers wrote in a court filing on Wednesday afternoon. The move forecloses the possibility that Pagliano would break his months of silence about the server issue, even as scrutiny has intensified on his role. Pagliano’s lawyers told Judicial Watch more...

Maryland’s highest court has released an opinion explaining its recent decision to force an officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray to testify against his colleagues. The Maryland Court of Appeals issued its opinion Friday. Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbara writes that compelling Officer William Porter to testify while he awaits retrial is not a violation of his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. …

The FBI recently spent more than $1 million for assistance in decrypting a device's contents. It may have overpaid. Alternatives exist, whether it's a $5 wrench or indefinite imprisonment for not helping the government with its prosecution efforts. A Philadelphia man suspected of possessing child pornography has been in jail for seven months and counting after being found in contempt of a court order demanding that he decrypt two password-protected hard drives. The suspect, a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, has not been charged with any child porn crimes. Instead, he remains indefinitely imprisoned in Philadelphia's Federal Detention Center for...

BREWER, Maine — When Ken and Jo-Ann Arbo moved into their home in Eddington 22 years ago, they thought they found the perfect place to live.“I hunt right there. I fish out there. I snowmobile out there,” Ken Arbo said of the woods and fields near the couple’s home. “That is why we moved out there.”Now the Arbos face the real possibility of moving again.Their Lambert Road home is within the path of the controversial I-395/Route 9 connector, a proposed two-lane road from Brewer to Eddington meant to ease heavy truck traffic and improve safety on nearby routes 46 and...

Watchdog Group Warns of Using Justice System to Appease Violent Protestors(Washington, DC) - Judicial Watch announced today it filed an amicus curiae brief with the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, arguing that forcing Baltimore Police Officer William G. Porter to testify against fellow officers before his retrial for manslaughter, assault, and other criminal charges over the police-custody death of Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., would have a significant, adverse chilling effect on his constitutional rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Judicial Watch asserts the unusual push to force Office Porter to testify while facing charges is part of an unjust...

The Justice Department said this week it is putting off payments "for the time being" to local law enforcement agencies that participate in the federal asset forfeiture program. The move comes after Congress recently took $1.2 billion from the department's asset forfeiture fund as part of budget maneuvering. Under the program, the Justice Department permits local law enforcement to share proceeds of seized assets from investigations in which they participated. But significant cuts to the fund by Congress mean those "equitable sharing" payments are being put on hold. ...

A former aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton who helped set up the server that housed Mrs. Clinton’s private email account plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in response to congressional questions about the email practices, according to two people briefed on the matter. The former aide, Bryan Pagliano, was subpoenaed to testify before the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But a lawyer for Mr. Pagliano, Mark MacDougall, has told the committee that Mr. Pagliano will decline to answer their questions and assert his Fifth Amendment privilege. ​Mr. ​Pagliano was the information technology director for Mrs....

<p>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.</p>

After invoking the Fifth Amendment 220 times under five hours of questioning Thursday, an investigator for Sheriff Joe Arpaio blurted out an impassioned tale that the sheriff's office investigated the federal judge overseeing Arpaio's contempt-of-court hearing because the judge was "a victim" of the federal government's illegal seizure of his bank and IRS records. The court heard a number of audio recordings Zullo made with his iPhone... In another recording, former billionaire Tim Blixseth tells Arpaio that then-Senator Barack Obama had hired computer hackers to doctor Obama's birth certificate and change Florida voting records to alter redistricting efforts. Blixseth said...

Two senior officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs have pleaded the Fifth Amendment in front of a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on relocation bonus corruption. Philadelphia and Wilmington VA regional offices director Diana Rubens and St. Paul VA regional office director Kimberly Graves pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer any of the numerous questions put forward by HVAC chairman GOP Rep. Jeff Miller. “Sir, I’ve been advised by counsel not to answer that question to protect my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,” Rubens repeated multiple times. The five employees from the VA involved in...

Fight on to stop government grab of money needed for legal defense It’s no secret that President Obama and his Democratic Party want to restrict the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. In addition, First Amendment religious-freedoms protections have been challenged by Obamacare. And freedom of speech? That’s just fine as long as it lines up with the “same-sex marriage” social agenda. Now, a case is posing a challenge to the Fifth Amendment’s property rights and due process protections along with the Sixth Amendment’s assurance of counsel for those accused of crimes. The U.S. Supreme Court now is...

On March 31, Ronald Machen, the outgoing U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote House Speaker John Boehner to inform him that the Justice Department would not present Lois Lerner’s contempt citation to a federal grand jury. The letter explaining his decision is an exercise in misdirection—the kind of misdirection that magicians use to fool an audience. Why? Because at no point in his detailed, seven-page legal analysis does Machen mention the most important point demonstrating that Lerner did, in fact, waive her Fifth Amendment right.

The Justice Department will not seek criminal contempt charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner, the central figure in a scandal that erupted over whether the tax agency improperly targeted conservative political groups. Ronald Machen, the former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a seven-page letter this week that he would not bring a criminal case to a grand jury over Lerner’s refusal to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in March 2014. The House approved a criminal contempt resolution against Lerner in May 2014, and Machen’s office has...

The Obama administration informed House Speaker John A. Boehner this week it will not prosecute former IRS executive Lois G. Lerner for contempt of Congress, concluding that she did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions when she was called to testify nearly two years ago. Ms. Lerner, the figure at the center of the IRS’s tea party targeting scandal, is still facing investigation over the intrusive scrutiny of conservative groups, but the decision by U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen not to pursue the contempt charge approved by the U.S. House does away with at least some of...

A critic of mandatory child vaccinations made no apologies for her views in an appearance on Newsmax TV Tuesday, and said that public anger over the Disneyland measles outbreak should be directed at pharmaceutical companies and the federal government, not people like her. "What's happening is people are freaking out about measles outbreaks," Louise Kuo Habakus said ina combative interview with "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner. "They're pointing the finger at unvaccinated children and non-vaccinated families, when really what needs to happen is people need to be pointing the finger at industry and at Congress." Habakus, co-founder of a group called...

Sen. Rand Paul yesterday introduced S. 2644, the FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act, which would protect the rights of citizens and restore the Fifth Amendment’s role in seizing property without due process of law. Under current law, law enforcement agencies may take property suspected of involvement in crime without ever charging, let alone convicting, the property owner. In addition, state agencies routinely use federal asset forfeiture laws; ignoring state regulations to confiscate and receive financial proceeds from forfeited property.

California's measles outbreak has climbed to 91 confirmed cases, prompting a vicious attack from USA Today contributor Alex Berezow against "anti-vaxxers." He blames them for the epidemic that CDC officials say was introduced at the Disneyland theme park by a person infected with measles overseas. Berezow's knee-jerk reaction is to declare, "Parents who do not vaccinate their children should go to jail." He erroneously maintains that measles could not spread in a fully vaccinated society and discredits as "ludicrous" concerns regarding the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Claiming there is a "mountain of data" proving otherwise, his one and only...

A number of commentators have argued tonight, with no challenge by their media interviewers, that even if the evidence was insufficient to indict Officer Darren Wilson, justice would have been better served if the grand jury had indicted anyway. That way, the reasoning goes, we could have had a public trial in the light of day where everyone could have seen that the case was insufficient. That, we are to believe, would have made it easier for the community to accept the result. The interests of the community, however, are not the only ones in the equation, much less the...