Members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi will interview a key witness from the State Department this week, Chairman Trey Gowdy announced Tuesday.
Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s undersecretary for management, signed off on the temporary diplomatic facility in Benghazi prior to the 2012 terror attack there that left four Americans dead. He also oversaw the agency’s record-keeping practices, presiding over Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private server to shield all of her official communications while she served as secretary of state.
“Our committee looks forward to completing the first thorough investigation into what happened before, during and after the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi,” Gowdy said in a statement. “Ours is the first to obtain and review roughly 70,000 pages of relevant documents, but we are still waiting to receive crucial records from the CIA and the State Department.
“Patrick Kennedy will hopefully be able to shed some light about some of these serial delays and why security in Benghazi was grossly inadequate,” the South Carolina Republican said.
Kennedy reportedly attempted to influence the handling of Clinton’s private emails last year. He has been linked to a number of controversies under Clinton, including the suppression of an inspector general probe into prostitution allegations made against an ambassador.
Kennedy selected the members of the independent Accountability Review Board, which conducted an internal probe of how the State Department failed to prevent the Benghazi attack. That board did not find Kennedy responsible for the decisions he made leading up to and during the 2012 raid.
The key State Department official will be the 72nd witness to sit for questioning before the Benghazi committee. He had been slated for a closed-door interview Jan. 26, but that session was rescheduled to Wednesday in the wake of a snowstorm that shut down Washington for several days.
A spokesman for Democrats on the committee noted Kennedy has already participated in four different congressional inquiries into Benghazi.
“It’s Groundhog’s Day, so the Benghazi Select Committee is once again on repeat– announcing that Under Secretary Kennedy will be interviewed by Congress about Benghazi…again,” he said.
