Jody Hice Questions Hillary Clinton Aide About Private Email Server

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee took up the issue of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server on Tuesday. Committee member Georgia 10th District Congressman Jody Hice was ready with questions. Unfortunately, Bryan Pagliano, a former State Department computer specialist, failed to show up, and Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton, Platte River Networks employees who used BleachBit software to delete thousands of emails after they were subpoenaed pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify.

As a result, Congressman Hice ended up questioning Justin Cooper. Cooper is a former aide to President Bill Clinton who helped set up the private server in Hillary Clinton’s home, but apparently was not an information technology person. It wasn’t pretty:

After asking about the procedures used to set up the server, potential malicious logins to the private server, and whether Cooper knew anything about the appropriateness of the private server, Rep. Hice wrapped his questioning with this:

Well, it seems to me, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Cooper, and everyone in this room and everyone in the country, for that matter, that we know the potential dangers of information getting in the hands of our adversaries. And you’ve related that that possibility exists dramatically.

In fact, Director Comey was right when he said– and I thought he was being very polite when he said– that this is extremely careless what has taken place. And unfortunately, Mr. Cooper, you’re right in the middle of that.

As the Chairman brought up a while ago, we have nations coming after us, and here you are standing up as a defense to try to keep security from being leaked out to professionals and countries, and the words of Director Comey have to be directed to you as well. This has been extremely careless, what has taken place. Your handling of the IT infrastructure, even in the midst of admittedly not being an expert in this field, to me shows absolute disregard for our national security.