One day after Rep. Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, accused Chairman Trey Gowdy of jumping to conclusions about an outed CIA source, Gowdy hit back by suggesting the entire process of redacting information may be compromised.
Within an hour of the Democrats’ decision to publish a selective 124-page summary of past witness interviews, a Republican spokesman was slamming minority members for their “obsession with covering for Hillary Clinton.”
The exchanges Sunday and Monday highlighted the internal tensions that have threatened to overshadow the committee’s investigation of the 2012 Benghazi terror attack as the panel prepares to question its most high-profile witness later this week: Hillary Clinton.
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White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest captured the enormously high stakes facing the Benghazi panel Monday when he suggested the focus at Thursday’s interview with Clinton will be on the committee’s conduct, not on Clinton’s answers.
“They’re under a lot of pressure to produce,” Earnest said. “Thus far we haven’t seen them produce much.”
“I think the pressure will really be on them, frankly, to justify their own existence,” he added. “That very existence has been called into question by at least two Republican members of Congress.”
Earnest was referring to Rep. Richard Hanna, who told a radio station last week that the Benghazi probe was “designed” to damage Clinton. The White House spokesman was also alluding to comments late last month by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in which he suggested the Benghazi committee’s top accomplishments included weakening Clinton’s poll numbers.
While Hanna’s criticism was levied directly at the panel, McCarthy’s statement was clearly a mistake. The California Republican, then the top contender to replace John Boehner as speaker of the House, spent weeks apologizing for his poor word choice before withdrawing from the leadership race altogether.
Regardless of what McCarthy meant to say about the committee, his comments opened the door for eager Democrats to discredit the investigation and for Clinton to soften scrutiny of her private email use. Clinton has since called the Benghazi panel “an arm of the Republican National Committee,” and congressional Democrats used the opportunity to attempt a legislative end to the investigation.
The Benghazi panel operated largely in the shadows from its creation in May 2014 until March of this year, when the public learned the committee had uncovered Clinton’s use of a private email and server to shield her official communications from all previous Benghazi investigators.
From March to late September, committee Republicans and Democrats publicly clashed over whether to publish the transcript from a closed-door interview with Sidney Blumenthal, an informal adviser to Clinton. Their public interactions grew increasingly bitter as the committee received growing national attention.
For example, Cummings chided Gowdy in July for failing to crack down on leaks about the investigation, while Gowdy has repeatedly criticized Cummings and other panel Democrats for declining to participate in document requests and planning witness interviews.
But the animosity between factions led by Gowdy and Cummings reached new intensity after McCarthy’s gaffe, prompting a fresh round of accusations and document releases that have only deepened the divide within the committee.
Under fire from the Clinton campaign and Democrats both on and off the panel, Gowdy will face what is perhaps the greatest challenge of his political career Thursday when he leads the committee’s interview of the former secretary of state and current front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president.
Critics were given new fodder Sunday during a back-and-forth between Gowdy and Cummings over the contents of an undisclosed Blumenthal email.
Cummings sent a letter to Gowdy Sunday morning that he said “debunked” Gowdy’s Oct. 7 claim that the Blumenthal email contained the identity of a CIA informant.
“The problem with your accusation — as with so many others during this investigation — is that you failed to check your facts before you made it, and the CIA has now informed the select committee that you were wrong,” Cummings wrote.
The Maryland Democrat said CIA officials informed the committee late Saturday evening that nothing in the disputed email was classified, thereby invalidating Gowdy’s claim that Clinton had received an email containing the name of a CIA source.
Gowdy fought back Sunday afternoon by releasing the Blumenthal email, with the name of the CIA source redacted, and clarifying that the executive branch, not the CIA, had redacted the name of the informant. He said the email contained information that “ordinarily would be considered highly sensitive.”
“This appears to mean either Mr. Blumenthal conveyed false and unreliable information to Secretary Clinton about Libya and misrepresented it, or the review process is faulty or has been politicized,” Gowdy wrote.
The next day, Democrats released the 124-page report that they said summarized witness interviews up to this point, although the report indicated minority members asked the same set of questions about Clinton of all 54 witnesses. Gowdy’s spokesman slammed the report as further evidence of the Democrats’ attempt to politicize the report in ways that benefit Clinton.
Late Monday afternoon, Cummings again attacked Gowdy by publicizing links between the South Carolina Republican and an anti-Hillary political action committee, accusing Gowdy of supporting the PAC in its efforts to tear down Clinton. His attack on Gowdy came even as Democratic members of the committee, including Reps. Adam Schiff and Tammy Duckworth, have openly endorsed Clinton’s candidacy.
