A small excerpt:



The report concludes that none of the witnesses substantiated repeated claims that Republican Members of Congress and presidential candidates have been making about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the past three years relating to the attacks in Benghazi.

The report also releases key excerpts from unclassified interviews conducted by the Select Committee and calls on Chairman Trey Gowdy to release the full transcripts of all interviews and depositions conducted to date, consistent with classification guidelines.

Finally, the report provides additional information about Secretary Clinton’s actions during and after the attacks.

Politicization of Benghazi Select Committee

When Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy admitted on national television that Republicans have been using millions of taxpayer dollars to damage Secretary Clinton’s campaign for president, he crystallized in one moment the ground truth of this investigation.

One week later, a self-described “conservative Republican” investigator publicly revealed that he had been fired from the Select Committee’s staff in part because he wanted to conduct an objective investigation and refused to go along with Republican leadership plans to use the Select Committee to “hyper focus on Hillary Clinton.”

Then, last week Republican House Member Richard Hanna admitted during a radio interview: “This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton.”

Chairman Gowdy has denied these criticisms, stating: “I cannot say it any plainer than stating the facts, the Benghazi Committee is not focused on Secretary Clinton.” He has also argued that, “instead of listening to someone else’s words, why don’t you look at our actions?”

In fact, these remarkable and repeated Republican admissions are consistent with the actions of the Select Committee to aggressively target Secretary Clinton, while abandoning plans to conduct a more thorough, fact-based investigation of the attacks. For example:

Chairman Gowdy identified Secretary Clinton as the first witness he wanted to testify one day after Stop Hillary PAC, a group that describes itself as “created for one reason only—to ensure Hillary Clinton never becomes President of the United States,” delivered about 264,000 signatures demanding that he subpoena her. This is the same group that aired a highly offensive attack ad last week exploiting images of the four Americans killed in Benghazi and Ambassador Steven’s grave—without the knowledge or consent of his family.

After the New York Times issued its story on Secretary Clinton’s emails in March, the Select Committee abandoned all of its scheduled monthly hearings for 2015—except its hearing with Secretary Clinton. The Select Committee has not held a single public hearing since January.

 The Select Committee abandoned its plans for a public hearing with the Secretary of Defense, as well as its plans for a private interview with him. The Select Committee has never asked a single question to the Secretary of Defense—in public or private.

 The Select Committee has never held a single hearing with anyone from the Department of Defense in 17 months, and the Select Committee has conducted nearly ten times as many interviews of State Department employees than Defense Department employees (39 compared to 4).

 Of the 70,000 pages of documents obtained by the Select Committee, the only documents Chairman Gowdy has chosen to release publicly are Secretary Clinton’s emails with Sidney Blumenthal. His actions contradict his own claim that “serious investigations” do not “make selective releases of information without full and proper context.”

 At the same time, Chairman Gowdy has blocked the public release of Mr. Blumenthal’s deposition transcript, which would reveal the questions Republicans asked about issues related to Secretary Clinton that have nothing to do with Benghazi, as well as Mr. Blumenthal’s answers to questions about the emails that Chairman Gowdy released.

 The Select Committee has been engaged in an aggressive press campaign focused almost entirely on Secretary Clinton, issuing 27 press releases related to Secretary Clinton since March, but only 5 on all other topics combined. Chairman Gowdy has referenced Secretary Clinton more than 50 times in nationally televised interviews since March.