Clintons paid outside salary to State Dept. staffer for server work

The State Department aide in charge of installing and maintaining Hillary Clinton's private server was not being paid by the federal government to do so -- instead, the Clinton family personally paid the staffer, a campaign official confirmed to CBS News.

IT professional Bryan Pagliano was paid $5,000 for "computer services" by the Clintons before he joined the State Department staff, the Washington Post first reported. After he started working at the department in May 2009, however, Pagliano continued to receive payments from the Clinton family to maintain the server, the newspaper reports.

The Democratic presidential candidate acknowledged Saturday that the "personal services" Pagliano rendered were paid for by the family.

"With respect to personal services that he provided to me and my family, we obviously paid for those services and did so because during a period of time we continued to need his technical assistance," Clinton told reporters in New Hampshire. "And I think that's in the public record."

When asked if she believed the private arrangement was problematic, Clinton responded: "No, I don't think so." The Clintons are no longer paying Pagliano, the campaign confirmed.

Campaign spokesperson Nick Merrill added on Twitter that Pagliano was "hired by the Clinton family as a consultant" to work "periodically" on managing the system:

Pagliano listed the initial payment on financial disclosures he filed in April 2009 but did not catalog the continuing income in required filings in later years. The State Department reportedly found no evidence that Pagliano ever informed them that he was making an outside salary.

South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, who heads the House Select Committee investigating the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, subpoenaed Pagliano last month to testify before congressional investigators about Clinton's server. But in a letter earlier this week, Pagliano informed Gowdy that would invoke the Fifth Amendment and would not appear before the committee.

Clinton's presidential campaign has said they encouraged Pagliano to testify.

"We have been confident from the beginning that Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email was allowed and that she did not send or receive anything marked classified, facts confirmed by the State Department and the Inspector General," Merrill said in a statement Thursday. "She has made every effort to answer questions and be as helpful as possible, and has encouraged her aides, current and former, to do the same, including Bryan Pagliano."

Pagliano isn't the only former State Department staffer that Clinton has hired for purposes outside of government work. Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide, also served as the then-secretary's deputy chief of staff and later went on to work at the Clinton Foundation.

Pagliano himself served as the IT director for Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign and has since worked for her political action committee. Though Pagliano no longer serves on the State Department's full-time staff, he remains a contractor for the State Department.

On Friday, the Democratic presidential hopeful said she was "sorry" for how confusing the issue of her emails had become for voters.

"It was allowed, and it was fully aboveboard ... but it would have been better if I had two separate accounts to begin with," she told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell in an interview. "I am sorry that this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions, but there are answers to all these questions."

CBS News Digital Journalist Hannah Fraser-Chanpong contributed to this report.

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