CLINTON AIDE WILL TAKE 5TH AMENDMENT OVER PRIVATE SERVER: The former Clinton presidential campaign and State Department aide, Bryan Pagliano, has been subpoenaed to testify before the House Benghazi Committee but has already indicated he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. Pagliano set up Clinton’s private email server in her New York home in 2009.

“While we understand that Mr. Pagliano’s response to this subpoena may be controversial in the current political environment, we hope that the members of the Select Committee will respect our client’s right to invoke the protections of the Constitution,” his attorney, Mark MacDougall, wrote.

Two other Senate committees have contacted Pagliano in the past week, according to a copy of the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post. The requests came from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, according to people familiar with the requests.

The Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Wednesday that it sought to ask Pagliano about his work for Clinton.

“In response to questions . . . Mr. Pagliano’s legal counsel told the committee yesterday that he would plead the Fifth to any and all questions if he were compelled to testify,” a spokesperson for committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Benghazi committee, had subpoenaed the computer staffer Aug. 11 and ordered that he appear for questioning before the committee Sept. 10. Gowdy also demanded that Pagliano provide documents related to the servers or systems controlled or owned by Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Pagliano, who worked in the State Department’s information-technology department from May 2009 until February 2013, left the agency when Clinton departed as secretary. He now works for a technology contractor that provides some services to the State Department.

But hey, there’s nothing criminal here–move along–because according to Media Matters, there is no evidence that Clinton “knew” that she was mishandling classified information. This shows utter ignorance of what the “knowing” scienter standard means in criminal law. According to the Model Penal Code, “knowingly” means:

(b) Knowingly.

A person acts knowingly with respect to a material element of an offense when:

(i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or the attendant circumstances, he is aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such circumstances exist; and

(ii) if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.

So Clinton (and/or her aides) had to be “aware that [her] conduct [of using a private server to send and receive classified information] is of a “nature” that such mishandling could exist, or alternatively had to be “aware that it [was] practically certain that [her] conduct” would cause such a mishandling of classified information.  Under either approach, the use of a private server while Secretary of State, alone, indicates such culpable awareness.

Nice try.

RELATED: Another 57 Clinton email threads contain foreign government’s (and thus likely classified) information.