Panel reconsiders

Benghazi panel reconsiders scope of email probe

After a barrage of Democratic complaints of partisanship, GOP considers downplaying the investigation of Clinton's unusual email setup.

By Rachael Bade

Amid growing Democratic accusations of overreaching, especially on the matter of Hillary Clinton’s emails, Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee are now reconsidering how aggressively to pursue the email scandal that’s been dogging the Democratic front-runner.

The committee is also undecided about whether to call ex-Clinton campaign staffer Heather Samuelson, who helped screen Clinton’s State Department emails, according to a GOP source. Just a few weeks ago, GOP members of the panel were eager to question Samuelson, because panel sources say she was the lawyer who initially chose which of Clinton’s emails were work-related — and thus should be turned over to the State Department — and which would ultimately get deleted.

Now, however, Republicans are debating whether to bring her in.

“The question becomes: Is it worth the hassle and the drama?” the GOP source said.

The reevaluation follows a Thursday hearing which was widely seen as a success for Clinton, while Republicans failed to strike any decisive blows. Meanwhile, Democrats amped up their claims that the entire investigation was a partisan witch hunt.

The panel’s mandate was to investigate the circumstances surrounding the killing of four Americans outside the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, in the waning months of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. But after the revelation that Clinton used a private email server for her State Department correspondence, Republicans on the panel began probing further into whether she had turned over all relevant emails.

Still, GOP leaders maintained that they’ve never focused directly on Clinton's email setup, which is currently being investigated by the FBI, although a fired GOP committee staffer said they zeroed in on the issue after the server was discovered.

Faced with a growing barrage of Democratic accusations that they’re targeting Clinton for political reasons, Republicans on the panel are downplaying the email question — at least for now. After their high-profile turn in the national spotlight with Clinton’s Thursday testimony, the panel is headed back behind closed-doors for purely Benghazi-related interviews with officials from the White House, the Department of Defense and CIA, sources said.

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) has long maintained he’s only interested in the emails because he wants to assemble a complete record of Clinton’s communications when she ran the State Department. During their investigation, Benghazi Republicans found about 15 Clinton emails that she never turned over — raising GOP suspicions that more might be missing.

But the email issue only came up briefly at the tail end of her marathon Benghazi hearing. And Republicans spent the bulk of their time pressing Clinton over the security failures at the Libyan diplomatic mission, and attacked her leadership of the State Department.

Still, even Gowdy admitted Clinton’s 11-hour testimony failed to produce any major new revelations. “I don’t know that she testified that much different today than she has previous times,” he told reporters after the hearing Thursday.

Republicans say Clinton’s testimony wasn’t about scoring points or catching her in a “gotcha” moment over the Benghazi attacks — or the emails issue, for that matter. They said they were aiming to piece together a larger mosaic around the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack that left four Americans dead.

But after a lengthy day of tense, and sometimes confrontational testimony, Democrats aren’t buying it.

“I think the American people are left wondering what prompted the select committee at all; there is not a single new ray of light shed on the tragedy that took place years ago,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on a telephone call with reporters Friday. “The committee Republicans badgered Hillary Clinton at every turn, they interrupted her and threw the kitchen sink at her. But despite all of the attacks Hillary was rock solid.”

Panel Republicans and Democrats took to the TV cameras Friday to try to spin the hearing, with the left repeating their calls for the panel to disband, and the right insisting Clinton had been evasive.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) during a CNN appearance touted a series of new emails he questioned Clinton about, which show that she told her daughter, Chelsea, and the Egyptian prime minister that the attacks were pre-meditated — a statement that contrasted with what U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice would say on TV shortly after the assault.

He also defended Gowdy’s comment that suggested Clinton had broken no new ground in her testimony.

“Of course she gave the same answer; she stuck to her story,” he said. “That … is not that surprising.”

Jordan, a dogged Oversight panel member with a reputation for rapid-fire questions, was the only Republican who really took Clinton to task on the email issue Thursday. During the last round of questions, he pressed Clinton on why she would say she was being “as transparent as possible” when it took numerous lawsuits and demands from the committee before she turned over her documents.

Clinton did not offer a direct answer for many of Jordan's questions, including why she had given different dates for when she started using her private email and why she suggested the Secret Server protected her server.

“Secretary Clinton, seems like there's a pattern, pattern of changing your story,” Jordan said. “[Y]ou say one thing, the truth comes out, weeks and months later, you say something else.”

Clinton said the panel should talk to her attorneys about those specifics.

And that was that. The committee spent less than 20 minutes on the matter in the 11 hour hearing.

Committee spokesman Jamal Ware said the panel will spend the next few weeks interviewing “two individuals whose identities must remain secret,” adding to more than 50 of about 70 they’ve already completed.

In the meantime, the committee might not say much about Clinton for a while, at least until the panel’s final report.

“She’s an important witness, you can’t investigate Benghazi without talking to the secretary of state at the relevant time, but as I said this morning, she is one important witness out of 50,” Gowdy said shortly after the hearing ended on Thursday night. “In terms of conclusions drawn, I don’t draw conclusions until the end…. We’ll keep going on until we’re able to interview all the witnesses that we think have access to relevant information.”