Clinton on Benghazi report: Time to ‘move on’

Trump has regularly blamed Clinton for the death of Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, and three others in attacks in Benghazi by militia groups on September 11, 2012, and said the incident undercuts her argument that she is the stronger candidate on national security. But with Donald Trump as her opponent, a controversial figure in his own right with even higher unfavorability ratings, Clinton can probably ride it out. The committee interviewed more than 100 witnesses and reviewed some 75,000 pages of documents, but an nearly accidental discovery by the panel previous year has overshadowed Clinton’s candidacy.

Clinton’s appearance before the panel followed months of controversy about her use of a private home email server for her State Department work, a disclosure that emerged in part because of the panel’s demand to see her official records.

“Not a single wheel of a single US military asset had even turned toward Libya”, Gowdy complained. “As for the Democrats, color me shocked that they are critical of our report”.

“Democrats want to make this about one person”.

“My job is to report facts”, Gowdy said of the majority’s report. “I think it’s pretty clear it’s time to move on”, she said during a campaign stop. The remark contributed to McCarthy’s failure to win election to House speaker. “I am hopeful that the next president will take to heart these findings, correct the deficiencies in our US military response and help prevent future American lives from being lost”. The report also portrays a “series of heroic acts” by Americans under attack.

Military leaders have testified repeatedly that they didn’t have intelligence information on what was happening or the resources on alert to respond in time to the attacks, which occurred at two separate locations over 13 hours.

In response to the report, Clinton’s campaign said it had “not found anything to contradict the conclusions of the multiple, earlier investigations”. The 800-page report affirmed the conclusions of previous investigations – that the United States’ national security apparatus, including the Clinton-led State Department, was ill-equipped to protect the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and had not heeded warnings about risks to the facilities.

Since it was established in May 2014, the Gowdy committee held four public hearings, according to its website, which said that it interviewed 107 witnesses, mostly behind closed doors, including 81 who never appeared before the other committees that investigated the attacks.

Already bitterly partisan, Tuesday’s release of the report exposed divisions within Republican ranks.

The committee’s five Democrats denounced the Republicans’ report as “a conspiracy theory on steroids – bringing back long-debunked allegations with no credible evidence whatsoever”.

A 2012 report by a government accountability review board faulted State Department officials for providing “grossly” insufficient security in Benghazi, despite upgrade requests from Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and others in Libya.

Department spokesman Mark Toner says Benghazi was an important outpost during the civil war and nobody believed in the importance of being there more than Chris Stevens did.