Democrats: Benghazi testimony debunks GOP claims

He’s now fighting back against attacks on his character and motives as critics are claiming the Benghazi investigation is merely a political exercise to go after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In his letter to Gowdy on Sunday, US Representative Elijah Cummings, the Benghazi committee’s top Democrat, accused Gowdy of trying to “inflate” the significance of the redacted information and suggested that the “standard operating procedure” of the Benghazi committee had “become to put out information publicly that is inaccurate and out of context in order to attack Secretary Clint – on for political reasons”. “It’s time to bring this taxpayer-funded fishing expedition to an end”. Clinton is scheduled to appear before the Benghazi Committee to testify on Thursday.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Benghazi Committee, said this weekend that the last couple weeks have “been among the worst weeks of my life”.

The report comes amid an escalating rift between Republicans and Democrats on the committee.

The Washington Examiner covered the story with this headline: “Clinton burns Central Intelligence Agency Libya contact”.

Gowdy described emails from Ambassador Chris Stevens to the State Department requesting more security nearly from the moment he arrived in Libya in 2012.

The CIA has told Congress that the name of an alleged secret agency source, mentioned but then partially redacted by the US State Department from an e-mail received on Hillary Clinton’s private server was not considered by the agency to be secret at all. At another point, Clinton aide Victoria Nuland asked Stevens for advice on “public messaging” on the increasingly risky situation in the region, Gowdy said. But he said they point to “the total disconnect between what was happening in Libya with the escalation in violence – that we were a soft target, that there was an increase in anti-Western sentiment… while Washington is asking him to read and react to a Sidney Blumenthal email and help on how to message the violence”. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Sens.

The report also takes on claims by GOP presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee.

“I have told my own Republican colleagues and friends, shut up talking about things that you don’t know anything about”, Gowdy said Sunday on CBS.