Donald Trump slammed three witnesses who refused to testify before Congress in an investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server use, saying their not showing up or pleading the fifth proved the Democrat's "actions are far more corrupt than we even imagined."
"It's this attitude of arrogance that explains why Hillary Clinton made her 13 phones disappear — including with a hammer — so that the FBI couldn’t see them, and why she bleached her emails after a congressional subpoena," Trump told a rally Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa. "Now, the people who destroyed the emails are all pleading the Fifth Amendment in front of Congress today.
"Anyone watching today's hearing in Congress knows that Hillary Clinton's actions are far more corrupt than we even imagined."
The three witnesses were subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in its probe of Clinton's private email server.
The key witness, Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department computer specialist who set up Clinton's server, did not attend the session.
His attorneys said in a letter to the committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah that Pagliano would continue to assert his constitutional right not to testify. Pagliano has spoken to the FBI under immunity, telling the bureau no successful security breaches of the server had occurred. But he said he was aware of many failed login attempts he described as "brute-force attacks."
He also refused to answer questions last year before the special House panel investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
"He has never made any statement or taken any action that would constitute a waiver of his constitutional rights and there is no reason for anyone to believe he might suddenly depart from that position," Pagliano's lawyers told Chaffetz in a letter dated Tuesday.
Chaffetz said Pagliano would face consequences for refusing to appear and for "thumbing his nose at Congress" — though the chairman did not specify what the penalties would be.
The other two subpoenaed were from Platte River Networks Inc., the Denver-based company that serviced the private account. They appeared before the committee but invoked their constitutional right not to testify.
The two, Bill Thornton and Paul Combetta, were excused from the session.
In June 2013, after Clinton had left office, the server was moved from her home in Plattsburgh, N.Y., to a data center in northern New Jersey, where it was maintained by Platte River.
In his Iowa speech, Trump charged Clinton's email debacle was "a far bigger scandal than Watergate ever was, but with Watergate we had the Justice Department doing its jobs. Here we don't have either.
"This is a scandal that threatens national security and that involves a multimillion dollar pay-for-play scheme between the Secretary of State and her foundation," Trump said.
"Whether it's her emails, her disasters in Iraq, Libya and Syria, or her failures on the economy, Hillary Clinton lacks the judgment, temperament and moral character to lead this country."
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