The House Select Committee on Benghazi released its final report on Tuesday, which concluded their lengthy investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya. The committee's chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), led a combative and disjointed press conference during which he defended the report and the committee itself from a skeptical press corps.
Gowdy, who represents portions of the Upstate,was selected to chair the committee when it was formed more than two years ago. On Tuesday, Gowdy was flanked by his fellow Republicans on the committee as they released an 800-page reporton the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
The committee had been criticized as a political tool to attack the Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who was serving as U.S. secretary of state during the attacks on the state department's consulate in Benghazi. Gowdy has repeatedly insisted the investigation is not politically motivated, including during a question and answer session with USC political science students last year.
On Tuesday, Democratic members of the committee released their own report to contradict the criticisms of Clinton and the Obama administration contained in the official version. “Color me shocked that they are critical of our report," Gowdy said sarcastically when asked about the Democratic response.
Gowdy said the report contains critical new information that had not been uncovered in previous investigations of the incident. "Nobody has ever reported that not a single wheel was turning towards Libya," he said, referencing the lack of an immediate military response from the U.S. "God knows nobody has ever reported who actually evacuated our folks.”
The congressional inquiry was also notable for their discovery that Clinton conducted all of her communications as secretary of state using a private e-mail address, in violation of state department rules. Gowdy alluded to several specific e-mails during the press conference.
“You didn’t know about any of the e-mails from Ambassador Stevens," Gowdy said, in reference to the concerns Stevens expressed over security in Libya. "You didn’t know about any of the e-mails from Sidney Blumenthal," he said. Blumenthal, a former aide to Bill Clinton during his presidency, had been an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state and urged Clinton to take credit for the U.S. intervention in Libya as a success before the attacks.
The committee also found evidence of a top-level White House meeting the night of the attack that Gowdy criticized as focused on inaccurate intelligence. "I haven’t heard much about this White House meeting until this report was issued," he said on Tuesday. According to Gowdy, at that meeting the administration still partially believed the attack was in response to an inflammatory movie mocking the Prophet Muhammad that had inspired protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and elsewhere earlier that day.
Gowdy criticized the administration's focus on the possible threat of a response to the film. “What the hell was going on in Benghazi?" he said. "Was that not a real crisis? Was that not a real threat that emerged?”
The press corps in attendance on Tuesday, however, was intent on focusing on the impact the report would have on Clinton's presidential campaign. Gowdy repeatedly refused to criticize or blame Clinton for her response to the attack, despite repeated openings to do so.
“That was not what the House asked me to do," he said. "Look at the resolution," Gowdy said, referring to the original 2013 House resolution that created the committee. "The resolution doesn’t mention Secretary Clinton. [Neither] Speaker Boehner nor Speaker Ryan have ever asked me to do anything about 2016 presidential politics. Speaker Boehner asked me to find out what happened to four of our fellow citizens and I believe that that is what I have done.”
Gowdy, a USC School of Law alumnus, made several references to his time as South Carolina's 7th Circuit Solicitor and a federal prosecutor.
“I’m not in the business of apportioning culpability — I think that there’s enough to go around," he said. "When you do what I used to do for a living, you ask the families ‘What is it that you would like to see done?’ And I am at peace that we did exactly for the families what we said we would do.”
Gowdy also used the language of the law to deflect questions about Clinton, including when one reporter asked him if Clinton was a liar. "That’s a word you couldn’t use in a courtroom," he said. "Look at the full body of evidence that was available, and then look at what was said. And then you draw your own conclusion."
Two members of the committee took a different tact than the committee chairman and released a separate report Tuesday attacking Clinton directly.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) claimed Tuesday that Clinton's political concerns clouded her judgement. “Libya was supposed to be the crowning jewel of the Clinton state department foreign policy," he said. "This was their example of how it works.” Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) also had harsh words for the press Tuesday regarding Clinton. “If you choose to put political expediency and politics ahead of the men and women on the ground, for that you’ll have to answer to yourself," he said. "I find it morally reprehensible.”
However, Gowdy would not answer questions about the supplemental report, did not respond to questions about the comments of the two more strident committee members and even allowed Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) to take the podium and rebut the statements from Jordan and Pompeo.
“This report has never been about one person," Westmoreland said. "The media has made this, wants to make this about one person. The Democrats want to make this about one person. That’s never been our intention.”
Clinton's campaign responded to the report shortly before Gowdy took the podium on Tuesday.
"After more than two years and more than $7 million in taxpayer funds, the Committee report has not found anything to contradict the conclusions of the multiple, earlier investigations," spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement. "This report just confirms what Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and even one of Trey Gowdy's own former staffers admitted months ago: This Committee's chief goal is to politicize the deaths of four brave Americans in order to try to attack the Obama administration and hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign."
McCarthy was criticized when he suggested on Fox News last year that the committee was politically motivated. "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" he said. "But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”
Clinton herself responded to the report during a campaign stop on Tuesday.
“While this unfortunately took on a partisan tinge, I want us to stay focused on what I’ve always wanted us to stay focused on and that is the important work of diplomacy and development," she said. "The best way to honor the commitment and sacrifice of those we lost is to redouble our efforts to provide the resources and support that our diplomats and our development experts deserve. So I’ll leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it’s pretty clear it’s time to move on.”