Hillary Clinton: Republicans' Benghazi committee strategy 'deeply distressing'

Kevin McCarthy’s admission that House committee was used to hurt Clinton’s presidential prospects ‘dishonors everybody who has served our country’

A day after a top Republican touted the impact on Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers of a congressional probe into the 2012 Benghazi attacks, the former secretary of state condemned the comments as “deeply distressing”. House majority leader Kevin McCarthy said in an interview Tuesday night that the House select committee on Benghazi was part of a Republican “strategy to fight and win”. “And let me give you one example,” McCarthy said. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.” Clinton responded sharply to McCarthy’s comments in an interview with Al Sharpton to air Sunday morning on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation.

“When I hear a statement like that, which demonstrates unequivocally that this was always meant to be a partisan political exercise, I feel like it does a grave disservice and dishonors not just the memory of the four that we lost, but of everybody who has served our country,” Clinton said, according to a transcript of the interview. US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed when militants attacked a US diplomatic outpost and CIA operations center in Benghazi, Libya, on 11 September, 2012. Clinton was secretary of state at the time. Republicans in Congress accuse her of failing to do enough to prevent the attack, of mishandling it afterward and of seeking to cover up her supposed mistakes. The mission of the select committee on Benghazi has ostensibly been to explore those charges, but Democrats have accused Republicans of mounting a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition. McCarthy appeared to admit as much in the Tuesday interview, with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“I have to tell you, I find them deeply distressing,” Clinton said of the remarks in her MSNBC interview. “I knew the ambassador that we lost in Benghazi. Along with him, we lost three other brave Americans who were representing us in a very dangerous part of the world.

“There have already been eight investigations in the Congress. One independent investigation. We have learned all we can learn about what we need to do to protect our diplomats and our other civilians and we need to be enforcing and implementing those changes, which is what I started and what Secretary [John] Kerry has continued.

Clinton also had sharp words for Republicans who questioned Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards in a committee hearing Tuesday. The women’s health organization has been at the center of a political firestorm, with Republicans threatening to shut down the government in an effort to defund the group. That threat proved empty Wednesday, as the House passed a resolution to continue federal spending levels.

“The Republicans bullied and demeaned Cecile Richards personally in her appearance for more than five hours before their committee,” Clinton told Sharpton. “They dismissed the important work that Planned Parenthood has done for many years helping to treat millions of American women.

“And they clearly were, you know, showing contempt for women’s health and the kinds of personal concerns that women bring to making very difficult decisions about their health and their choice.”