Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate Benghazi, is fine with Hillary Clinton’s decision to appear at a full hearing to discuss her involvement in the incident as secretary of state.
But before that occurs, Gowdy sent Clinton a letter and a list of his questions and requested answers before Clinton appears at what the chairman intends to be two hearings to discuss Benghazi and her use of a private email server while secretary of state.
Gowdy’s letter requests Clinton to meet with the committee and offers a number of venues for such a meeting. As a former prosecutor, Gowdy is meticulous and is trying to sequence his investigation. He asks first for documents and answers, then for a public hearing with Clinton the week of May 18 and after that, a follow up before June 18.
Clinton, through her attorney David Kendall, instead prefers a public hearing with the full attendance of the national media. Clinton has appeared before a Benghazi investigation only once before, on Jan. 23, 2013, when she famously shouted at senators “at this point, what difference does it make?” whether the Benghazi attack was an act of terrorism “or four guys out for a walk.”
Critics of the Benghazi Select Committee point out that only eight of the letter’s 136 questions are directly related to Benghazi. The other 128 attempt to elicit the facts of how Clinton came to have her own server and whether it might have compromised national security during her tenure at the State Department.
Gowdy’s request has been made necessary by Clinton’s deletion of 30,000 emails and her refusal to make the server available to congressional investigators and their technical advisers. From the Accountability Review Board’s report to Freedom of Information Act Requests to reports by the House and Senate intelligence committees, the absence of the former secretary of state’s email trail has rendered their findings incomplete.
