Clinton, GOP prepare for hearing
Landscape altered for House panel investigating attack in Benghazi, emails
WASHINGTON — The House Select Committee on Benghazi has been preparing for months to interrogate Hillary Rodham Clinton about private email accounts, the computer server in her house and the Americans killed in Libya, but on the eve of the hearing Thursday, it is not Clinton who appears to be on the defensive. It is the committee. Republicans say the investigation is focused on the four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, assault.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the committee chairman, says he wants to ask Clinton, who was secretary of state when the assault occurred, why U.S. security at the compound was not beefed up as conditions in Libya deteriorated and other countries, including Britain, were pulling out.
But congressional Republicans have made enough missteps in the runup to what many expected to be a pivotal event in the presidential primary that Gowdy finally implored his colleagues over the weekend to “shut up talking about things you don’t know anything about.” The Clinton campaign now views the daylong grilling that once threatened to derail her White House bid as a veritable campaign stop.
Clinton slipped out of public view this week to prepare answers for every line of questioning her team can imagine. The cram session reflects the high stakes of the event, with a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing 44 percent of Americans are not satisfied with Clinton’s response to the attacks in Benghazi and even more saying her email controversy will factor in their vote.
But Clinton is also strategizing how to use the hearing as a springboard to introduce her foreign policy vision. Clinton’s team is betting that the committee, chastened by questions about its motivation, will focus more on Libya than on email — which is exactly what Clinton wants.
“This investigation has not unveiled a lot of new facts,” said one senior Clinton adviser, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the preparations. “And no matter how many hours it lasts, she is not somebody who is going to break. Good luck trying to break Hillary Clinton.”
The hearing that once promised to be a flashpoint in the email controversy, where Clinton would either put it behind her or sow more doubt in the minds of voters, is no longer quite that.
“A month ago, the stakes would have been much higher,” said David Brock, who leads Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton super PAC. “The Republicans have been knocked back.”
One big reason is Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who was poised to be House speaker until he bragged on Fox News last month about the committee’s effectiveness in damaging Clinton. It contradicted assurances by Gowdy that the panel was not targeting anyone. Last week, Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y., also described the panel’s work as partisan.
And Gowdy himself, days before the hearing, returned $6,000 in campaign donations from three political action committees affiliated with a fourth, Stop Hillary PAC, that recently ran ads assailing Clinton on the Benghazi attack.
Then there is the threatened wrongful termination lawsuit from a Republican investigator on Gowdy’s committee who says he was fired after refusing to bend to pressure to narrowly target digging toward Clinton.
It has all left committee Republicans straining to define the hearing as about anything other than attacking Clinton. “This isn’t about Hillary,” Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., said Tuesday on CNN. “She just happened to be there as secretary of state when this tragedy occurred.”
Gowdy sent an exasperated letter to committee Democrats on Sunday that began: “(Our) committee is not investigating Hillary Clinton.”
Yet more Americans think the investigation is overly partisan and unfair than believe it is fair and impartial, the NBC/Journal poll found, with 36 percent calling it unfair, compared with 29 percent who see it as fair.
But roughly a third of the public, 35 percent, said they don’t know enough yet to judge the probe’s fairness — an audience both sides presumably will be trying to influence.
Clinton supporters are spending more than $1 million to air ads Wednesday and Thursday attacking the committee in key early voting states. The committee Democrats rolled out a 124page, footnoted report concluding the investigation is a sham.
Clinton will also talk about Stevens, the ambassador killed in the 2012 attacks, as someone she knew personally, the senior adviser said. And she will strike a “solemn and substantive” tone in trying to work with the committee on solutions for keeping diplomats safe, while also insisting that the lesson to be learned from the Benghazi attack is not that American envoys need to retreat from such hot zones.