House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz was clearly frustrated on Wednesday after a former Hillary Clinton aide was a no-show at a hearing on Tuesday, even though he had been served with a subpoena.
"First of all, we have a duly issued subpoena," the Utah Republican told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program."This ain't an optional exercise. When you have a subpoena issued, if it happened to anybody else in the world, do you think you'd be in jail or have some handcuffs on you?"
Bryan Pagliano, who had helped maintain Clinton's private email server, has been granted immunity by the Justice Department and already invoked his Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself twice on the matter.
The current subpoena served "no legislative purpose and is a transparent effort to publicly harass and humiliate" him 'for unvarnished political purposes,'" his lawyers wrote in a letter to Chaffetz.
"The two people who came, they have a constitutional right to exercise their Fifth Amendment, but let's remember, you have an administration who says they're not going to prosecute anybody," Chaffetz told Fox News. "We believe that one of those people has an immunity agreement in place. So you'd think they'd sing like songbirds and do the right thing for the country. But no, they plead the Fifth."
There are things at the committee's disposal that can be done to bring in the witnesses, said Chaffetz, even though it doesn't prosecute or bring people in handcuffed.
Just one of the five witnesses called, Justin Cooper, a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton, testified and answered questions for nearly two hours. The other three invoked their Fifth Amendment rights.