Democrats first on Benghazi

Panelists’ pre-emptive report says 4 couldn’t have been saved

WASHINGTON -- Evidence collected by the House Select Committee on the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, confirms that Defense Department actions could not have saved the lives of four Americans killed, that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was actively "engaged" and responsive during the attack, and that no one in the Obama administration lied about what happened, according to a report issued Monday by committee Democrats.

The Democrats' report came in advance of a report by the committee's Republican majority expected as soon as today. The committee, the Democrats said, "obtained no credible evidence that any Administration official made intentionally misleading statements about the attacks."

Over the course of the two-year investigation, the minority report said, the committee "squandered millions of taxpayer dollars in a partisan effort to attack a presidential candidate."

Release of the 344-page Democratic report amounted to a pre-emptive strike against a majority version, after years of charges that the GOP majority was using the committee to hinder Clinton's presidential campaign.

Republican insistence that the investigation is not politically motivated was undermined last year when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested that the House committee could take credit for Clinton's then-slumping poll numbers.

Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., has said he hopes to complete the committee's work before this summer's nominating conventions. The majority report is expected to conclude that the administration, for political reasons, intentionally misrepresented the facts of the attack on a diplomatic compound that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and a State Department official, and an assault hours later on a nearby CIA facility in which two U.S. security contractors died.

"We know we were lied to," Gowdy said before the investigation began.

In a campaign speech last week, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump repeated a claim he had made previously, saying that Clinton's decisions as secretary of state "spread death, destructions and terrorism everywhere she touched. Among the victims was our late Ambassador Chris Stevens. I mean, what she did with him was absolutely horrible. He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed."

The committee inquiry, which came after investigations by an independent State Department panel and the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, was marked by escalating partisan sniping and bad faith on both sides. Since early this year -- as it became apparent they would not agree on a single report -- the two sides have barely been on speaking terms, and have communicated through a series of increasingly accusatory public statements.

Gowdy has accused the State and Defense departments of withholding information and documents.

In the report, the minority says that Republicans "excluded Democrats from interviews, concealed exculpatory evidence, withheld interview transcripts, leaked inaccurate information, issued unilateral subpoenas, sent armed Marshals to the home of a cooperative witness, and even conducted political fundraising by exploiting the deaths of four Americans."

"In our opinion," the report said, "Chairman Gowdy has been conducting this investigation like an overzealous prosecutor desperately trying to land a front-page conviction rather than a neutral judge of facts seeking to improve the security of our diplomatic corps."

"Decades in the future, historians will look back on this investigation as a case study in how not to conduct a credible investigation," it said.

"They will showcase the proliferation of Republican abuses as a chief example of what happens when politicians are allowed to use unlimited taxpayer dollars-and the formidable power of Congress-to attack their political foes."

Matt Wolking, a spokesman for Gowdy, said Democrats refused for more than two years to participate in the GOP's investigation.

"The dishonest Democrats on this committee falsely claimed everything had been 'asked and answered.' If that's changed, they should come clean and admit it. If not, everyone can ignore their rehashed, partisan talking points defending their endorsed candidate for president," Wolking said, referring to Clinton.

The Democratic report includes transcripts of witness testimony, except that of former Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, the release of which it says Gowdy "continues to block."

In addition to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Democrats on the committee include Reps. Adam Smith of Washington, Adam Schiff and Linda Sanchez of California, and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

Findings of the Democrats are largely in sync with previous investigations. "Although the Select committee obtained additional details that provide context and granularity, these details do not fundamentally alter the previous conclusions," the report says.

As have previous reports, the minority investigation concludes that the U.S. military was ill-positioned to respond quickly to the attacks, and says it "could not have done anything differently on the night of the attacks that would have saved the lives of the four brave Americans."

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Daly and Richard Lardner of The Associated Press.

A Section on 06/28/2016

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