Hillary Clinton’s IT squad is scheduled to report to Congress shortly, to discuss the then-Secretary of State’s questionable email choices. But, as it turns out, at least one person with direct knowledge of Clinton’s email setup – her most trusted IT aide – has already lawyered up and is now refusing to testify, citing the Fifth Amendment.

Bryan Pagliano has worked for Clinton since her 2008 campaign, and joined State alongside his former boss, working primarily in the IT department. He’s probably not loking at a rosy career ahead of him on her team now.

A former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail server tried this week to fend off a subpoena to testify before Congress, saying he would assert his constitutional right not to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself.

The move by Bryan Pagliano, who had worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009, came in a Monday letter from his lawyer to the House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The letter cited the ongoing FBI inquiry into the security of Clinton’s e-mail system, and it quoted a Supreme Court ruling in which justices described the Fifth Amendment as protecting “innocent men . . . ‘who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.’ ”

Sounds like Bryan fell prey to the typical Clinton scheme and is worried he might be pushed under the bus to save the floundering candidate’s stellar reputation. After all, how was Hillary Clinton supposed to know that classified information was passing in and out of an un-secured server if her IT guy never told her?

That probably explains why the Clinton campaign immediately issued a statement saying that they were disappointed with Bryan’s decision, even though Bryan is probably not disappointed to be free of the Clinton campaign or its creepy fingerpointing and complicated schemes. Though, to be honest, its hard to see how an IT guy who probably only ever took direction and never initiative with regard to the private server, would do something so egregious that he’d face the kind of Federal criminal charges you’d expect to be handed down following testimony in front of a Congressional panel. Maybe poor Bryan feels that he’ll be held responsible, say, for not “identifying threats” or “alerting the Secretary,” or some other non-sensical connection that the Clinton camp might eventually use to make him the fall guy. 

One thing is for certain, when your IT aide lawyers up, its very clear to everyone involved or with the potential to be involved, that Clinton is likely searching for a scapegoat, which none of them will want to be. Unless she’s planning to sacrifice Huma Abedin on the altar of House Judiciary Committee, its unlikely Clinton will find anyone ready to accept blame.