Hillary Clinton isn’t just ready on day one; she’s been ready since October to testify again about the fall of the U.S. embassy in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.
That was the claim in a bitter exchange Thursday between party leaders on the House committee probing the Islamist terror attack on the diplomatic compound in Libya’s second city, which left four Americans dead, including U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. The panel’s top Democrat accused Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy of lying about former Secretary of State Clinton’s willingness to testify.
Ranking Member Elijah Cummings of Maryland said he agreed to a request from South Carolina’s Gowdy in September to ask Clinton if she would speak to the committee. Cummings said Clinton quickly agreed to testify in a public hearing as early as December, and that he told the South Carolina lawmaker this in October.
Gowdy, in a TV interview Wednesday, suggested otherwise, saying he was glad to hear that Cummings had “changed his mind” to help him secure Clinton as a witness.
“In December he was not saying that,” Gowdy said. “But I do welcome his change of heart.”
Clinton testified to a Senate committee in January 2013, giving fuel to both supporters and opponents with her widely quoted rhetorical question, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Cummings called Gowdy’s statements about Clinton’s willingness to speak under oath “inaccurate.”
“I personally communicated all of this information to you more than three months ago,” Cummings said in letter Thursday to Gowdy. “It was your decision not to hold a hearing with Secretary of State Clinton in December. Instead, you decided to delay Secretary Clinton’s testimony. Then you explained to me that you wanted to obtain additional documents before setting a date for her testimony.”
Cummings and Gowdy have been exchanging testy correspondences in recent days over the chairman’s management of the panel. Democrats have complained that Gowdy was shutting them out of interviews with witnesses. Gowdy shot back, saying such a move is necessary because Democrats have refused to accept a negotiated rules package over their demands for veto power over subpoenas.
The Republican-run House voted in May to create a select committee to investigate what led up to the attacks and the Obama administration’s response.
Democrats generally view the 12-member panel, which includes seven Republicans and five Democrats, as Republican grandstanding over a U.S. defeat that has already been investigated by several other House committees — most notably the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
