Hanna: Benghazi committee ‘designed’ to attack Clinton

Having been fired by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Podliska, a self-described Republican, says he was pressured into engaging in partisan bullying against Clinton.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign immediately seized on Hanna’s comment, saying it proves that the committee has no credibility.

Hillary Clinton was politically targeted with the Benghazi hearings, a second Republican has admitted this week in a move that could give the former Secretary of State’s presidential campaign a big boost.

And that image has been enhanced by the numbers surrounding not only this panel but also the others have been convened on the subject:Ten congressional committees have participated in Benghazi investigations.

Abedin’s appearance came less than a week before Clinton is to appear before the panel.

Republicans on the Special Committee on Benghazi have said they want to find out who in particular was responsible for the U.S. Libya policy that put the diplomats in a risky situation, how it was they were not protected and what the administration’s response was to the entire event.

The committee has come under especially harsh criticism since Representative Kevin McCarthy, the No. 2 House Republican, suggested in a recent television interview that the probe had helped to drive down Clinton’s presidential poll ratings. She arrived this morning for what was expected to be several hours of questioning focusing on the September 2012 attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

“The Committee is supposed to focus on the events of that tragic night in Benghazi, but after eight investigations and multiple appearances before other Committees by the Secretary, I’m not sure there is much additional and productive ground to cover”, he said. “I support Chairman (Trey) Gowdy and the Select Committee in their efforts to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi”.

“This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was created to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton”, said Hanna, who is not a member of the committee.

“The question again becomes whether this is a taxpayer-funded effort to derail the candidacy of Hillary Clinton”, Cummings said during a six-minute statement to reporters outside the committee room.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and the Benghazi committee, told MSNBC today that Hanna’s original assertion was “just absurd” and “false on its face”.

In the email, Clinton Foundation CEO Robert Harrison forwarded a speaking invitation for Clinton to Abedin’s State Department email address and the new address. The committee also faulted Clinton for reducing security at the Benghazi consulate, despite her testimony that she “had no knowledge” of security requests from the compound. “I’ll answer their questions”. And you know, I think Claude Rains in The Invisible Man is offended by that, all right? He added there were a few instances she couldn’t “recall fully”.

Addressing questions about the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton repeatedly stressed that the differences between her and her Democratic rivals are “nothing like the differences that we all have with the Republicans”.

Republicans have dismissed the comments from the upstate New York Republican, who is not on the panel.