The House Select Committee on Benghazi was the first congressional committee to request the emails of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the 2012 terror attack that is the subject of the controversial probe.
While seven other committees have investigated aspects of the Benghazi attack, a State Department official told the Washington Examiner Tuesday the agency is “not aware” of any previous requests for Stevens’ emails.
The revelation came as Democrats on and off the committee argue the probe has taken a partisan turn in order to focus on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner for president.
Many critics, including Clinton herself, have pointed to the seven other congressional probes as evidence that questions about Benghazi have been “asked and answered.” Those criticisms escalated in late September, after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested one of the panel’s top accomplishments was bringing down Clinton’s poll numbers.
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But the State Department did not begin delivering copies of Stevens’ emails until Oct. 5, when it gave the select committee 1,371 pages of correspondence. The agency continued producing Stevens’ emails over the next two weeks, handing over copies of emails on Oct. 9, Oct. 16 and again Tuesday in a production that brought the total number of pages of emails in the committee’s possession to more than 7,000.
By contrast, the select committee has only received roughly 2,450 pages of Clinton emails to date.
Shortly before the State Department delivered nearly 1,300 pages of the slain ambassador’s emails to the Benghazi panel Tuesday, Democrats on the select committee sent out a “fact check” that they said debunked the “inaccurate claim” that the Stevens emails were new to Congress.
“In fact, Congress has had access to many of Ambassador Stevens’ emails for years,” committee Democrats wrote. “Although some additional emails from Ambassador Stevens have been produced, none of them include any evidence to change the core fact that was already known: Secretary Clinton was not involved in responding to requests for additional security in Benghazi.”
Other congressional committees that have investigated Benghazi, including the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have indeed had access to some of Stevens’ emails. That’s because some of their requests for documents from the State Department netted cables and emails on which Stevens was included, among other related records.
But no other committee had explicitly asked for Stevens’ emails in the past, raising questions about recent suggestions that the select committee is simply rehashing previous investigations.
A State Department spokesman said in a statement that the agency delivered the barrage of Stevens emails in response to “a recently prioritized request” from the Benghazi committee, noting the panel’s request was broader than requests from previous committees.
Both committee Democrats and the State Department said the new Stevens documents did not change the understanding that Clinton was not personally involved in denying requests for additional security for Stevens and his staff in the run-up to the Sept. 11, 2012 terror attack.
However, Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Benghazi committee, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that new emails from June 2012 indicate Stevens joked about asking another country to pay for his security because the U.S. seemed unwilling. Gowdy vowed to ask Clinton why concerns about inadequate security in Libya did not rise to the level of her office, but discussions about how to frame Libya policy for the media did.
Clinton is set to appear before the select committee Thursday for a highly-anticipated public hearing. Her interview will place enormous pressure on panel Republicans to demonstrate their objectivity amid intense scrutiny of their motives, which has mushroomed since McCarthy’s ill-conceived comments last month.
