Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch on Tuesday released testimony from Hillary Clinton’s email administrator Justin Cooper — you know, the guy who took a hammer to Hillary’s BlackBerrys.
Justin Cooper is a former aide to Bill Clinton and a Clinton Foundation employee who registered Hillary Clinton’s unsecure, non.state.gov email domains while she was the head of the Department of State.
Mr. Cooper previously testified to the House Oversight Committee in 2016 that he smashed two of Hillary Clinton’s BlackBerry phone devices with a hammer under questioning by Republican lawmakers.
“I think it’s practical to not just throw an old device into a garbage receptacle where someone might pick it up and try to use it,” Cooper told lawmakers in 2016 when asked why he took a hammer to Hillary’s BlackBerrys.
In the deposition released Tuesday, Mr. Cooper admits he set up two to three emails accounts for Hillary Clinton and said he ‘couldn’t recall’ whether the Apple server was wiped clean.
Via Judicial Watch:
Cooper testified that he spoke with Mills the week before giving his deposition:
Q When did you last speak with Cheryl Mills?
A Last week.
When Cooper was asked who approached him about creating the clintonemail.com account, Cooper answered: “It would have been a discussion with Huma Abedin.” Cooper also testified that Abedin was his primary contact regarding the choice of the domain name that was registered “I believe” in “January ’09.”
Cooper’s testimony is at odds with a 2016 Judicial Watch deposition of Abedin in which she testified that she became aware of the server through “reading in some news articles about a year, a year-and-a-half ago, when it was – it was being publicly discussed.”
Cooper said “I don’t recall” when asked if Clinton herself had any input in the creation of the domain name.
Cooper also testified that there were two servers: an original “Apple server” and then a Windows server, which was “the Pagliano server,” named after Clinton’s top State Department IT specialist Bryan Pagliano. Cooper said he couldn’t recall whether the Apple server was wiped once her emails were transferred over to the Pagliano server in early 2009.
When Cooper was asked to testify how many e-mails accounts he created or setup for Clinton he answered, “To the best of my recollection two or three.” Cooper also said that he and Pagliano set up email accounts for Abedin and Chelsea Clinton.
Pagliano was a Clinton State Department IT official who repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions in a 2016 Judicial Watch deposition.
When Cooper was asked if Clinton or anyone associated with them is paying his legal bills for this deposition or any other matters related to Secretary Clinton’s use of email, he answered: “In relation to [today’s legal expenses] it’s unclear to me if I’ll be reimbursed for these – for legal fees from the Clintons. My previous legal fees about a year after the conclusion of the congressional testimony through my lawyers was negotiated for settlement for the Clintons to make payment.”
He identified controversial Clinton Foundation official and advisor to President Clinton Doug Band as the individual in a redacted FBI 302 report who had conversations with Cooper and Abedin about the Apple server and who thought adding Hillary Clinton to the server was a “bad idea.”
Q Let me direct your attention to the fourth paragraph about four lines up. This is a redacted version, so we don’t know who the interviewee is or some of the names. But I want to direct your attention to the line that starts off with the redaction and says, blank recall the conversation with Huma Abedin and Cooper regarding the addition of Hillary Clinton to the Apple server; do you see that?
A I do.
Q Do you know who that individual would be …
A I suspect it’s Doug Band.
Q The next line says, blank thought it was a bad idea, but the issue had been decided by that point in time; do you see that?
A Yes.
“Questions surrounding a wiped server, a Clinton lawyer being informed of a scheduled deposition, contradictory testimony – all uncovered recently by Judicial Watch in its court-ordered discovery on the Clinton email scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
.@JudicialWatch Releases Testimony of Clinton Email Admin– Clinton Lawyer Cheryl Mills Communicated with Him a Week Prior to Testimony https://t.co/16yUF7kRxz via @JudicialWatch
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) June 18, 2019
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