The new device i would interface with mr. Pagliano. Rep. Mica did you ever talk about this acting the destruction of a device, did he participate in the destruction of any device . Mr. Cooper no. Rep. Mica are you aware of what happened to his emails . Mr. Cooper he serviced the server. Rep. Mica you set it up and you confirmed with him. Set itper mr. Pagliano up and i was the interface between the users rep. Mica would he have had any emails on the servers . And you have no idea what would have happened to all of his emails . Mr. Cooper i certainly do not. Rep. Mica you were made aware on two occasions to secret service, i think january 2011, that someone was trying to hack the system. Is that correct . Mr. Cooper i used that word to describe what was a series of false logins on the server. Rep. Mica not once but twice. Then you closed down the system briefly to deal with the situation. Mr. Cooper correct. Rep. Mica when were you First Contacted by the fbi . Mr. Cooper i believe it was august of last summer. Rep. Mica was that the first time you sat down with them . Or was that later . That was your first interview . How many times were you interviewed . Mr. Cooper three times. Rep. Mica could you give us the approximate dates . Last summer was the first mr. Cooper last summer, subsequently in the fall, and this spring. Rep. Mica were you offered any type of immunity agreement by the department of justice . Mr. Cooper i was not. Rep. Mica how long have you been represented by your current counsel . Mr. Cooper since my First Contact with the fbi. Rep. Mica and again, you have explained it was the clintons you paid for your counsel and up to that time, and the organization that was set up by the clintons. Mr. Cooper i am the only person who has paid for my counsel. Rep. Mica you pay for your own expenses, they have not pay for any . Mr. Cooper correct. Rep. Mica did you have any kind of a joint Defense Agreement with any other individual involved with the investigation . Mr. Cooper i have no such agreement. Rep. Mica finally, you stepped back from the daytoday activities with the clintons about the time of the transition, is that correct . As she left office . Mr. Cooper yes. Rep. Mica and pagliano took over. Mr. Cooper yes. Rep. Mica you were responsible for helping with the transfer, in fact, you walked her aide over the phone through taking information that they had in emails and archiving it, is that correct . Mr. Cooper at one point, i assisted Monica Hanley in setting up a laptop computer so she could create an offline archive of the emails. Rep. Mica to your knowledge mr. Cooper i do not know the outcome. Rep. Mica you do not know do you know, finally, whether there were attempts to delete any information that had been stored that was going to be transferred in archives . Mr. Cooper i have no knowledge of that. Rep. Chaffetz i recognize miss norton. Rep. Norton thank you, mr. Chairman. The fbi report, the average american with a matter involving ms. Clintons emails to rest for the average person. It was a tough report. And yet, i want to ask you, mr. Cooper, about one of those kernels. One of the most venal of the conspiracy theories to come forward out of that report follows in terms of testimony you gave and the report quotes you, and i take it you were under oath before the fbi . Mr. Cooper i was not under oath. Norton where it says you advised clinton and others, and im quoting a report, when they obtained a new mobile device, helping them back up the data from the old device before transferring it to the new thinking the new device with the clinton server. Mr. Cooper that is correct. Rep. Norton that quote is correct. The summary describes two instances, and here is where the conspiracy theories have been acted out in this house and the president ial campaign. That you recall two instances where you destroyed old mobile devices with a hammer, and mr. Trump claimed who would do that if it did not have anything to hide, and representative desantis picked up that rhetoric and said it obviously shows intent to hide something. Cooper, i want to directly ask you about the destruction of those blackberries. Was your purpose in destroying the old blackberry device ever to hide secretary clintons emails from being saved or disclosed from federal records laws . Mr. Cooper congresswoman, no, not in any way to destroy or hide any information at all. Speak to what would be considered federal records. In fact, the opposite would be the case. I was going out of my way to preserve all the information on those devices, transfer them to the new devices, and make sure the server rep. Norton that was going to be my next question. Before you destroyed them from one blackberry to another, did you transition the very same emails . From the old blackberry to the new one . Mr. Cooper the combination of the backup procedure and activating the new device. It would have ended up on the new device before we went and deleted, using the blackberry tools to wipe the device. You copied the content of the secretarys and loadeded it, it on a new device . Mr. Cooper that is correct. Rep. Norton during the course of the fbis investigation, did you realize you still had retained extra copy of the content of those old blackberry devices on your own machine . Did you provide that information to the fbi . Mr. Cooper in preparing to meet with the fbi and examining my files related to the server, i did describe some files that may have contained content related to this. I turned that content over to my attorneys, who worked with the fbi and the department of justice on capturing that material for their possession. Rep. Norton i take it that was to make the case that you did not intend to destroy the blackberries to hide anything. Mr. Cooper that is correct. Rep. Norton now the fbi has the information that was on every thele blackberry, including last blackberry. Mr. Cooper certainly they have the information for the ones i had backup files on. Rep. Norton in any case, it is from one blackberry to another blackberry with nothing lost in between. Mr. Cooper correct. Rep. Norton thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Rep. Chaffetz i now recognize the gentleman from tennessee, mr. Duncan. Duncan thank you, mr. Chair. Mr. Cooper, do you consider yourself to be an expert in the i. T. Field . Mr. Cooper no, i do not. Rep. Duncan do you think the state department should have had someone more qualified than you to oversee and protect secretary clintons servers from hackers . Mr. Cooper i was not working for the state department. I believe the server to be used by president clintons office. Secretary clinton had a personal account on that server. I cant i am not in a position to discuss what role of the government is on protecting that. Rep. Duncan on january 9, 2011, at 2 57 a. M. , you sent an email to secretary clintons top aide , huma abedin, explaining you had to shut down her server due to someone trying to hack it. How many times did you personally have to shut down the server to prevent it from being hacked . It wasper again, and the server that contains president clintons office and secretary clintons office. This was a series of failed logon attempts, which was brought to my attention on alert in my system. One of the ways to stop that was in the early operations of the server was to shut down the server for a period of time so that the attacks would cease. We would develop more sophisticated ways to filter those sorts of failed login attempts. Rep. Duncan do you know whether powering down the server is the typical way in the i. T. Community to protect against hacks . Rep. Duncan mr. Cooper i cannoto that. Rep. Duncan do you know what a brute force attack is . Mr. Cooper yes, a brute force attack, from my understanding, is a series of highfrequency failed logins using a variety of usernames and passwords. Rep. Duncan how many brute force attacks did you observe on the clintons server . Mr. Cooper i cannot say with any specificity how many had happened. They happened with some frequency of the last two and a half years while she was in office, but we developed systems to tamper these down. Rep. Duncan the term was frequency. Mr. Cooper some frequency. Rep. Duncan i yield my remaining time back to the chairman. Rep. Chaffetz mr. Cooper, how many people had access to the server . Mr. Cooper in terms of administrators . Rep. Chaffetz i want the whole universe. Administrators, users, behold it, the whole gambit. Mr. Cooper there were two people who had some administrative rights. Myself and mr. Pagliano. I cannot tell you exactly how many users there were over the lifetime of the server. But it was less than 20 people. Rep. Chaffetz was there a Remote Access login available . Mr. Cooper the only Remote Access for the server was for myself and mr. Pagliano. Rep. Chaffetz was it encrypted . Mr. Cooper i cannot speak to that. I cannot recall. Rep. Chaffetz you were running it mr. Cooper mr. Pagliano was running it. Rep. Chaffetz did it have dual authentication . Mr. Cooper i do not recall dual authentication. Has 20 oddtz it people who can do it, intermingled with the clinton foundation, Clinton Executive Services, did they also have access to that . Mr. Cooper i cannot say it is intermingled with the clinton foundation. Rep. Chaffetz you were being paid by them, right . There were people being paid either clinton foundation. Who were accessing the system, right . Mr. Cooper individuals who had multiple Job Responsibilities some people did do work for the clinton foundation, yes. Rep. Chaffetz did state department ever contact you or complain or issue any sort of concern . Mr. Cooper they did not have any concern. Mr. Cooper, i understand that in order to make secretary clintons private and secure the statertment department had to lower its own security settings at least temporarily to manage secretary clintons more insecure server. Did you know about the fact that she had this insecure server . Mr. Cooper that is not something i specifically know about. I read accounts of that, but i have no direct knowledge. Rep. Chaffetz we recognize the gentleman from massachusetts. Thank you. Thank you mr. Cooper for being here. Mr. Cooper, the fbi conducted a yearlong investigation that they did not find clear evidence that secretary clinton or her colleagues intended to violate the law in the handling of classified information and he went on to say that he did not see evidence that is sufficient to establish that secretary clinton and with the those with whom she corresponded, when they did it, knew that what they did was against the law. I know youre not a computer in his it is yearlong investigation, the fbi did have a number of technical computer experts on the team and it took about a year, and i want. O recite their conclusion this is director komi comey. He said with respect to potential computer intrusion, we did not find direct evidence that secretary clintons personal email domain was successfully hacked. The fbi investigation summary similarly stated parens analysis did not find evidence confirming that clintons email server systems or compromised why cyber means. Do you have any information that contradicts the fbi findings . Mr. Cooper i do not. Ok. Interviewed brian kegley on a brian pegliano, the expert on the server. When asked about the maintenance and security of the server, he stated there were no security breaches, but he was aware that there were many failed login attempts which he referred to as brute force attacks. Is that statement that i just is that consistent with your recollection . Mr. Cooper it is consistent. Did you take any steps to protect the server when there were these failed brute force, socalled, login attempts . Ano created mr. Pegli a couple of ways to deal with this, including blocking ip addresses manually and automatically. Additional steps were described. Im not sure if it was him who took those steps to improve the security of the server, including establishing secure socket layer certification and internet protocol filtering to block access from wouldbe hackers. Is that consistent with your recollection . Mr. Cooper that is consistent. That is all i have. Rep. Chaffetz we now recognize the gentleman from ohio. I had question for the guys who are not here, that i want to walk the committee through this. We set up the slide. This is an email we think either from one of those guys. I just want to read this. Look at the date, a lot of things happened before august 15. When they told us to cut the backups and have them confirm us for our records, we are starting to think this is covering up a lot of bad stuff. Writingted something in because they knew they were going to get thrown under the bus. We know they change the backup structure because look at the fbi report, page 18. Someoneills instructed who is redacted to modify the email retention policy on clintons clintonmail. Com email account. She wanted to get rid of anything after 60 days. Lets walk through some history. On the fbi report. July 2014, at at the request of cheryl mills, remotely transferring all Hillary Clinton andils to cheryl mills having atops are later bleach bit attached of them. Report, page 15, during the summer of 2014, cheryl mills is giving a head given a heads up by the state department that there is a letter coming requesting all Hillary Clinton emails. Jump forward to december. General mills requests the Network Change the retention policy on her account. What happened right before . What prompted this change . December 2, chairman of Benghazi Committee since a later a letter to David Kendall that says we just found out about this other account. The other account that three clinton has, we would like any emails related to the benghazi situation from that account. Of course right after that, they change the policy and Platte River Network is instructed to delete anything after 60 days. To the amazing month, the one the chairman cited, march 2015. They haveimes reports this one email account, this private server situation. Letter, a preservation and tell them to preserve everyone anything that might be relevant to the investigation. March 4, a subpoena. March 9, Platte River Network is put on notice about a preservation order. March 10, she does her press conference. First, thoseready two days there are Conference Calls with clinton and her lawyers and Platte River Network and on the 31st of that month, is when they take bleach bit to the hold on thing and they get rid of everything the whole darn thing and they get rid of everything. Now we have three guys one on helped mr. Cooper get it set up and took the fifth and got immunity and now we have two guys on the tail end. They did not work for the government, they take the fifth and at least one gets immunity. Go back to the date. August 2015. His guys are wondering we dont have anything in writing. We have been given all these instructions to change the backup, delete things and the race things and the race things. Erase things. That is why it is appropriate for the chairman to see if they would come in here to answer somebody questions. They will talk to the people who can put them in jail, but they wont talk to congress. They will talk to the justice department. They wont talk to us. We cant put them in jail. We just want to get answers for the American People and they wont talk to us. Ive never seen anything like this. No regular american can get away with a kind of behavior secretary clinton gets away with. Two standards and this is what is so wrong and this is why the hearings you are having and the investigation we are doing is entirely appropriate. Rep. Chaffetz we now recognize the gentleman from texas. Thank you and thank you mr. Cooper for being here and testifying before us. Im pretty geeky, so i will ask some geek questions. Had,erver the clintons this was not just a personal computer that everybody had. This is a computer running Business Class software that delivered and forwarded and stored email for dozens of people, is that correct . That is correct. Are you familiar with the people who have this type of equipment in their homes . Mr. Cooper that is correct. Do you know anyone that might have a server like that at home . Mr. Cooper i know some people. It is pretty rare. Are you familiar with what email software was running on the server . Mr. Cooper i do not recall specifically. He told the chairman that it was set up to do emails forwarding to mrs. Clintons blackberry. There were two servers that we are speaking about, and apple server in use for approximately from approximately june 2008 until march 2009. That server was originally set up for president clintons office staff had some Software Running on it. One was an email client and the other was a tool that was supposed to interface with library with blackberry. Does it forward like the verizon blackberry j way . Mr. Cooper i cannot speak to the software. The focus was transitioning her email address. She was simply receiving the messages in, not retaining them on that server. The later server functioned more like what you are probably used to in your day today, where there was a mailbox on that server that could be accessed. Was it opened up to where you could get your email from that server through a web client . Mr. Cooper i do not recall. I think depending on the user, we were customized, brian would help to customize what ports were open based on how that user was accessing. Did you require that users picking up their mail remotely use a secure client . Mr. Cooper i dont recall of the protocols were. What the protocols were. It could have potentially been in clear text. Mr. Cooper i did not turn those over to the fbi. There was an instance where we shared some logs with the secret service when we first experienced failed login attempts. You got a notice when there was a failed login attempts, but someone doing this brute force attack just entered a username and through random passwords right,nd if they got it you would not have gotten a notice, would you . Mr. Cooper i dont want to suppose. You only get notices of failed login attempts. You are notified every time somebody actually login. Mr. Cooper correct. So somebody could have gotten in and you would not have known it. Was there was there a firewall between the internet and this server, a piece of hardware between the server and the internet . Mr. Cooper i believe there was. Was there one with the apple server . Mr. Cooper i do not recall. We talked a little bit about mrs. Clinton going through a variety of blackberries. Were they all the same or did when the newp one came out that you want the latest and greatest . Mr. Cooper i