Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the GOP-led Benghazi committee, denounced the probe Thursday as partisan and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
In his opening statement, the Maryland Democrat expressed respect for Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy but said the committee was mostly seeking to bring down Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Cummings also criticized Gowdy for stating in an interview that it was “impossible to conduct such a serious, fact-driven investigation in such a political environment,” as the Republican house intelligence committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Homeland Security committee all conducted bipartisan investigations into the events in Benghazi.
“The problem is that the Republican caucus did not like the answers they got from those investigations. They set up this committee with no rules, no deadlines and an unlimited budget. And they set them loose Madam Secretary, because you’re running for president,” Cummings said. “Clearly it is possible to conduct a bipartisan investigation. What is impossible is for any reasonable person to continue denying that Republican’s are squandering millions of taxpayer dollars on this effort to derail Secretary Clinton’s campaign.”
Democrats point out that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy seemed to affirm this critique. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he said. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today?” Since then, the Clinton campaign has openly criticized the Benghazi Select Committee.
