Ed Morrissey previously looked into the amazing fact that Bryan Pagliano, the IT staffer responsible for then Secretary of State Clinton’s digital communications, apparently never sent any emails himself during his entire time on the job. (Okay.. maybe he sent one.) You’re to be forgiven if your suspicious little minds found this a bit odd. Have you ever worked with an IT guy who didn’t spam your inbox on a regular basis with warnings about email policy, downtime notifications and a host of other geek relate material?

You’re not the only one who finds it more than a little strange. Law Newz has been digging into the background and spoken to current and former officials who have had to deal with such systems on a daily basis. The idea that Pagliano had nothing to say to his boss and her staff during his entire tenure is simply beyond the realm of fiction.

Dan Metcalfe, Founding Director, Justice Department’s Office of Information and Privacy (1981-2007):

“If it is true that federal records directly documenting his work no longer exist, then that is awfully coincidental, to put it most charitably — especially given the nature of his work and the role he has played in the Clinton e-mail controversy.

Indeed, it is more than ironic, given that what appear to be “missing” are e-mails. And it certainly now raises reasonable suspicion, as it did with the Senate a few months ago, that something was very much amiss here — either with record creation or record preservation, or both.

In short, the whole thing stinks to high heavens. It is difficult to imagine how anyone associated with Secretary Clinton in any way could envision getting away with something such as this.”

Some of you with as much gray hair as I have might still dimly recall when Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed that she kept her foot on the pedal of the President’s recording device for a long time while answering a phone call after accidentally hitting the recording button. This accounted for some, though not nearly all of more than 18 minutes of missing tapes in the Watergate scandal. Did anybody buy that story?

Not in the least.

Look, I understand that a criminal investigation has to rely on the facts and they must be supportable in a court of law. And sometimes strange things which defy conventional explanation do happen. (How else do you explain all those UFO sightings?) But at some point the public has to be allowed a reasonable level of incredulity when politicians and government officials begin spinning yarns which require us to believe that the sky is actually bright green instead of blue.

The idea that Pagliano didn’t send or receive any emails while managing Clinton’s email services is not just far fetched… it’s insulting to ask us to believe it. Now that Bryan has been granted immunity and sat down for interviews with the FBI we should be finding something out. At a minimum he should at least be on record saying that he did, in fact, send emails even if he can’t remember what they were specifically about. And at that point it will be obvious that somebody at the State Department is lying through their teeth.

Will they get away with it? Well… Nixon never went to jail, so who knows?