John Bentel (Credit: public domain)
“A former State Department IT aide invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer more than 90 questions Monday during the final deposition in a lawsuit over Hillary Clinton’s private emails.
John Bentel, former Director of Information Resource Management of the executive secretariat, would not answer questions about whether the Clintons had paid his legal fees or offered him financial incentives, according to Judicial Watch, the conservative-leaning group that brought the suit.
A federal judge in August ordered Bentel to testify under oath because “the record, in this case, appears to contradict his sworn testimony before the Benghazi Committee.”
Bentel told the House Select Committee on Benghazi in June 2015 that he had no knowledge of Clinton’s private email server.
However, the State Department inspector general later discovered that Bentel “told employees in his office that Secretary Clinton’s email arrangement had been approved by the State Department’s legal staff and also instructed his subordinates not to discuss the Secretary’s email again,” according to the court order.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 10/24/2016) (Archive)