The committee statement also accused Podliska of his own bias in his work on the committee, a claim the former staffer’s lawyer firmly denied.
Advertisement
“One month ago, this staffer had a chance to bare his soul, and raise his claim this committee was focused on Secretary Clinton in a legal document, not an interview, and he did not do it”, the South Carolina Republican said in a statement Sunday. He says the House committee is engaged in a partisan investigation of the Benghazi attack. The written statement, attributed to a committee spokesman, did not mention Podliska by name but said the former employee had shown poor judgement.
Podliska, an intelligence officer in the Air Force Reserve, described himself as a conservative Republican.
“These are extremely serious whistle-blower charges”, said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s top Democrat.
“The victims’ families, they deserve the truth – whether or not Hillary Clinton was involved, whether or not other individuals were involved”, Podliska said.
The committee on Saturday forcefully denied the allegations.
“Only by ending this expensive and politicized investigation can we begin to undo the damage already done through this unprecedented use of Congress’s power for nakedly political purposes”, he said.
Podliska also leveled accusations about the committee’s work environment, telling CNN that “there was very little work actually being done”.
He is planning to file a lawsuit next month alleging that he was sacked in part because he resisted pressure to conduct a skewed investigation focused exclusively on Clinton.
Podliska worked almost 10 months for the Republican majority staff starting in September 2014.
Podliska, now stationed in Germany, could not be reached for comment.
The Select Committee on Benghazi, formed in May 2014, has spent $4.6 million in one of the longest-running congressional investigations in US history, outlasting even the panel that investigated the Nixon administration’s historic Watergate scandal.
But two things changed in March, Major Podliska said.
They said they would release the full transcript in five days, in order to give Gowdy time to identify any specific information in the transcript he believes should be withheld from the public. But as this process prepares to wrap, he has demanded money from the Committee, the Committee has refused to pay him, and he has now run to the press with his new salacious allegations about Secretary Clinton’. His assertions today related to Secretary Clinton are brand new and transparently false.
Whether Podliska is being honest, or is simply retaliating against his former employers for being fired, or is covering for Clinton, as a few have suggested, will likely become more clear as the case makes its way through the courts, assuming it goes that far.
Emily Schillinger, a spokeswoman for Boehner, said in response to the ad: “This is a classic Clinton attempt to distract from her record of putting classified information at risk and jeopardizing our national security, all of which the FBI is investigating”.
Gowdy said he isn’t concerned about the criticism against himself, but said the staff investigating for the committee is made up of professionals who take their jobs seriously.
There is new controversy surrounding the House Benghazi Committee, the panel set up to investigate the terror attacks in Libya that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Advertisement
“He was instructed not to pursue his PowerPoint presentation *not* because the Committee has no interest in his issues, but because he wanted to create a sensational and conclusory presentation that was not related to the Committee’s investigative plan and was premature given that factual investigation on these issues was developing then and is still ongoing”, the committee’s statement said.
