The Washington Post reported last night that the Clintons personally paid former campaign and State Department aide Bryan Pagliano to set up and maintain their private email server:
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her family personally paid a State Department staffer to maintain the private e-mail server she used while heading the agency, according to an official from Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The unusual arrangement helped Clinton retain personal control over the system that she used for her public and private duties and that has emerged as an issue for her campaign.
The Clintons paid Pagliano at least $5,000 to set up the server before he joined Clinton’s State Department and then continued paying him after he secured a job at State:
The Clintons paid Pagliano $5,000 for “computer services” prior to his joining the State Department, according to a financial disclosure form he filed in April 2009.
But even after arriving at State in May 2009, Pagliano continued to be paid by the Clintons to maintain the server, which was in their Chappaqua, N.Y., home, according to the campaign official and another person familiar with the arrangement.
And Pagliano, who has said he will plead the fifth instead of testify about the server, never disclosed the payments:
Asked in early August about whether Pagliano had been paid privately to maintain the server, a State Department official said that the agency had “found no evidence that he ever informed the department that he had outside income.”
This week, a different State Department official said he could not clarify Pagliano’s pay situation, citing “ongoing reviews and investigations” of Clinton’s e-mail setup.
Pagliano did not list the outside income in the required personal financial disclosures he filed each year.
This new development raises further questions about Clinton’s decision to have a private server and flies in the face of her claim to not have thought about her email system when she became Secretary of State.