WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday criticized the special House committee investigating the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, calling it a partisan political exercise designed to “exploit” the deaths of four Americans.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recent comments that the Benghazi panel can take credit for her diminished public standing prove Republicans are going after her for political reasons, Clinton said. The Democratic presidential front-runner told NBC’s Today show that if she were president, she would have “done everything” in her power to shut down such a partisan investigation.
“Look at the situation they chose to exploit, to go after me for political reasons: the death of four Americans in Benghazi,” Clinton said in an interview before a campaign appearance in New Hampshire. “This committee was set up, as they have admitted, for the purpose of making a partisan, political issue out of the deaths of four Americans.”
Clinton was secretary of state during the 2012 attacks. She stopped short of calling for the Benghazi panel to be disbanded, as some Democrats have urged.
Clinton’s comments came as Democrats on the Benghazi panel released a partial transcript of a nonpublic interview with Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, in response to what they called selective and inaccurate Republican leaks.
Release of the transcript is “the only way to adequately correct the public record,” the Democrats said in a letter to the panel’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. They said they would release the full transcript in five days, to give Gowdy time to identify any specific information in the transcript he believes should be withheld.
A spokesman for Gowdy said the committee has not released transcripts from witness interviews in order to “gather all facts” and avoid tainting the recollections of future witnesses.
“By selectively leaking” parts of the transcript from Mills’ day-long interview last month, “Democrats have shown their nakedly political motivation, willingness to violate the letter and spirit of House rules and their desire to defend Secretary Clinton without regard for the integrity of the investigation,” Gowdy’s spokesman, Jamal Ware, said.