Hillary Rodham Clinton says the House Benghazi committee found nothing different than previous investigations into the 2012 attack that killed four Americans.
Advertisement
House Benghazi committee Republicans are imploring Americans to read their report as they unveil it at a news conference at the Capitol.
“Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods represented the best of us, and their loss was tragic”.
“If you can read this report and you believe, in the last page of the report, that this is about one person rather than about four people, then there’s nothing I can say that’s gonna disabuse you of that”, Gowdy said, “no amount of facts and no amount of evidence that’s going to dissuade you from your previously held conviction”. “That is exactly what my colleagues and I have done”.
Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee faulted the Obama administration Tuesday in a report on the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
FILE – A man walks inside the USA consulate in Benghazi, which was attacked September 11 and set on fire by al-Qaida gunmen, Sept. 12, 2012. “Think about that for a second”.
Despite orders from both President Barack Obama and then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, no military assets were sent to Libya until hours after the attack in Benghazi was underway.
Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, did not mention Clinton by name in a statement he released but said committee’s report “makes clear that officials in Washington failed our men and women on the ground when they were in need of help”. He also said his report reveals for the first time that the US military did not mount an armed response during the attack, although other reports have mentioned the extensive internal discussion at the time to try to respond. The attack was initially thought to be perpetrated by an angry mob responding to a video made in the USA mocking Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, but the assault was later determined to be a terrorist attack – a finding Republicans accused the White House of covering up to protect President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects.
Clinton’s presumptive Republican challenger, Donald Trump, remained uncharacteristically silent about the report hours after it dropped.
Last September, House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy admitted the Benghazi Committee was merely an organized effort to derail Clinton’s chances of winning the White House.
Clinton was also “active and engaged” on the night of the attacks and in subsequent days, saying she was in touch with the president, the Central Intelligence Agency director, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others in the hours following the attacks. “I want to thank Trey and the committee for their steadfast dedication to this important issue, and my prayers remain with the families of the four fearless Americans who lost their lives in Benghazi”.
Democrats released their own report before the Republican version came out Tuesday morning, which they say “debunks many conspiracy theories about the attacks”.
Already bitterly partisan, Tuesday’s release of the report exposed divisions within Republican ranks.
Advertisement
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said “the official facts surrounding the 2012 attacks in Benghazi have been known for some time”. “Our priority continues to be carrying out our national security mission while mitigating the risks to our employees”. The committee interviewed more than 100 witnesses and reviewed some 75,000 pages of documents, but an nearly accidental discovery by the panel past year has overshadowed Clinton’s candidacy. Two of them, Mike Pompeo of Kansas and Jim Jordan of OH, wrote what amounts to a dissenting report that is far more scathing toward Clinton and Democrats generally. She said that Stevens had originally chosen to serve in Benghazi because “he understood America had to be represented there at that pivotal time”.
