Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff refused to answer questions about the Democratic front-runner’s personal email server because she also acts as Clinton’s personal attorney, a deposition transcript made public Tuesday revealed.
Cheryl Mills, a longtime Clinton aide, told lawyers from the conservative group Judicial Watch that she learned the details of Clinton’s private email use after the former secretary of state had stepped down.
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During a taped deposition Friday, she and her lawyers blocked the majority of questions about Clinton’s communications because, by the time Mills learned how and why the private server system was established, she was already acting alongside David Kendall as Clinton’s personal representative.
The interview was the second in a series of depositions Judicial Watch will conduct in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over records from Clinton’s State Department tenure.
Mills recalled during her testimony discussing with State Department officials “questions that they had with respect to media inquiries that they anticipated” about Clinton’s emails.
The discussions about how to handle media scrutiny took place in “late summer” 2014, months before news of her private email use became public in a March 2015 New York Times report.
Mills said she was aware Clinton used a private email address to communicate during her time in the Obama administration.
“So Secretary Clinton continued a practice that she was using of her personal email,” Mills testified. “And I don’t know that I could articulate that there was a specific discussion as opposed to her continuation of a practice she had been using when she was [a] senator.”
However, Mills’ attorneys objected to the majority of Judicial Watch’s questions during the deposition, frequently instructing their client not to respond to the watchdog group’s inquiries.
Mills said she did not know why a State Department computer was never set up for Clinton, even though officials discussed procuring one for her at the outset of her tenure.
“I do know that she was not someone who used a computer,” Mills admitted.
The former chief of staff said she met Bryan Pagliano, a technology aide to Clinton, during the 2008 presidential campaign. Mills said she has had conversations with Pagliano, who reportedly secured an immunity deal with the FBI in exchange for his testimony, about the private server since the Clinton team left office but declined to elaborate due to attorney-client privilege.
