Benghazi committee steps up pressure on Hillary Clinton to testify
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Version 0 of 1. A House committee conducting an open-ended inquiry on the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, amplified on Thursday its demand that Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attacks, testify before the committee. Committee chairman Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina, sent a letter to a Clinton lawyer asking that the presidential candidate put her campaign on hold to make two trips to Capitol Hill to testify before the committee. One appearance would focus on the private email account Clinton used as secretary of state, while the other would focus on “the substance of the Benghazi terrorist attacks”, Gowdy said in the letter. “With her cooperation and that of the State Department and administration, Secretary Clinton could be done with the Benghazi committee before the Fourth of July,” Gowdy said. He has said separately that he expected the committee’s work to extend into 2016, the presidential election year. Clinton testified about the Benghazi affair before committees in both the House and Senate in January 2013, a month before she stepped down as secretary of state. But she has yet to appear before the select committee on Benghazi, which was created in May 2014. Representatives for Clinton have said she has already told her side of the story on the Benghazi attack, in which four Americans died, including the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. Clinton’s critics accuse her of not doing enough as secretary of state to heed warnings about insufficient security at a diplomatic outpost that was attacked, of responding too slowly to reports of the attack and of covering up information about the attack. Clinton has vigorously contested all of those charges, and on Wednesday the chairman of her presidential campaign, John Podesta, said efforts by the House committee to get her to testify were politically motivated. “Sadly, Republicans are determined to continue to exploit this tragedy in an effort to try and hurt her campaign,” Podesta said in a statement. |