Republicans seized on the testimony of a general in the United States’ Africa Command at the time of the Benghazi attacks on Sept. 11, 2012, to assert that the White House was misleading the public about the way events unfolded.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lovell, who has since retired from the Air Force, said that in the “very early, early hours” of the attacks he had concluded that al Qaeda affiliates or al Qaeda itself had been behind the attacks.