Co-host Gayle King introduced the story: “The House committee investigating the deadly 2012 Benghazi attack interviews Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide and confidante Huma Abedin this morning…Hillary Clinton will testify herself”.
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Now, Abedin was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department and was considered her body woman during the 2008 campaign. Gowdy has been keeping a relatively low profile amid a barrage of criticism lately from the Clinton campaign and a fired committee investigator, among others.
Number two House Republican Kevin McCarthy inadvertently suggested last month that hurting Clinton’s presidential campaign was an unstated committee goal.
“Yet it remains unclear why the committee is focused on her, given her lack of knowledge about the events surrounding Benghazi”, Merrill said in a written statement. The former Secretary of State is scheduled to testify before the panel on Thursday, October 22.
“I wanted to honor the service of those lost and injured in the Benghazi attacks”, Abedin said. Fox connected the Benghazi attacks to a potential Clinton presidential run shortly after President Obama’s 2012 re-election and then went quiet until May, 2013, when a Benghazi committee hearing sparked a surge of 19 mentions. “Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought”.
A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, stated Abedin’s employment at the State Department, work for the Clinton family foundation and work done for a consulting firm would not be part of the questioning.
“We’ve had Democrats accusing us of being political for nearly the entire time, but I know what we’ve done”, said Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS), also a member of the Select Committee.
Calling the committee a “partisan arm of the Republican National Committee”, Clinton added that this is the eighth investigation into the 2012 attack and said there is “an overwhelming focus on trying to…drive down [her] poll numbers”. Just last week, Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y., said he thinks a “big part” of the investigation was to go after Clinton.
Clinton talked about the committee during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union”.
House Speaker John Boehner, the driving force behind creation of the committee in May 2014, said he chose Gowdy, a member of the 2010 tea party class, because “he is one of the most professional, capable and respected members of Congress”.
As was mentioned above, Huma’s testimony was “behind closed doors”, which means that under normal circumstances, the committee wouldn’t release information about the back-and-forth between panel and witness. And the staffer – whose charges Gowdy has dismissed as “salacious allegations” – has no idea what the committee has done since June, he said.
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Hillary Clinton agrees with her husband’s assessment of the former “Celebrity Apprentice” star. But he said they point to, “the total disconnect between what was happening in Libya with the escalation in violence – that we were a soft target, that there was an increase in anti-Western sentiment…while Washington is asking him to read and react to a Sidney Blumenthal email and help on how to message the violence”.
