Team Hillary has found its opening.

After months of being dogged by the controversy surrounding her private email account, the 2016 Democratic contender and her supporters are taking the offensive against her congressional nemesis: the House Select Committee on Benghazi.


They’re seizing on comments from Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in which he boasted on national television that the panel’s work has hurt Hillary Clinton in the polls — a statement her supporters say vindicates their view that the panel is a politically motivated effort to damage her campaign.

Already, Republicans are distancing themselves from McCarthy’s remarks, even as he’s leading the race to be the next speaker of the House, and defending the panel they formed to investigate the 2012 attack on the Libya consulate. Democrats, on the other hand, have demanded that the panel be dissolved, with some Clinton allies even calling for McCarthy to abandon his bid to become speaker.

“The House established the Select Committee on Benghazi to investigate what happened before, during, and after the terrorist attack in Benghazi, and to ensure that justice is finally served,” outgoing House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement Thursday morning as McCarthy’s words continued to draw Democratic fire. “This investigation has never been about former Secretary of State Clinton and never will be.”

On Tuesday, McCarthy bragged to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “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.”

The comments undermined House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) efforts to keep his panel’s work focused on the Benghazi attacks and stay above the political fray.

But on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for the disbandment of the panel, while David Brock’s Correct the Record group pounded McCarthy, demanding he withdraw his bid for speaker.

“According to the odds-on-favorite, future speaker of the House, the Benghazi special committee was put together to hurt Hillary Clinton politically,” Reid said. “This is evidence of what Democrats have said all along. … Senate Democratic Leadership sent a letter to Speaker Boehner asking that the Benghazi Select Committee be disbanded. It’s the right thing to do.”

Republicans, meanwhile, worked to cover for their future leader, saying McCarthy’s comments had been misconstrued and he was referring to the panel’s discovery that Clinton had used a private email server instead of a State.gov account while she was secretary of state.

“Kevin could have said it more eloquently, but what Kevin was trying to get at was: As a result of the truth that’s come out from the Benghazi hearings, it’s had an impact on the trustworthiness factor of Clinton,” said Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio). “I don’t think he was trying to say the purpose was to go after Clinton.”

The Clinton campaign has spent months trying to defuse the email controversy, but it shows little sign of blowing over as Republicans press forward. The committee’s demand for Benghazi-related emails and documents exposed Clinton’s unusual private email server — a revelation that has triggered an FBI probe into whether classified information was ever put at risk.

At the crux of the debate is whether Republicans created the committee specifically to hurt Clinton or to seriously investigate the deaths of four Americans at the Benghazi diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012.

Democrats, including Benghazi ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), call the entire committee a waste of taxpayer funds and "the longest and least productive investigation in congressional history." They note that several other committees have already probed the attacks and turned up nothing, and accuse the right of increasingly focusing on Clinton herself.

Republicans, however, maintain that their investigation has no political intent.

“We have interviewed over 50 witnesses, most of who have never been interviewed before, including people who are on the ground in Benghazi,” said panel Republican Susan Brooks of Indiana. “So this is not a political witch hunt. It is about getting all the facts out."

Jamal Ware, the Benghazi panel spokesman, responded to McCarthy's comments by saying that “people view the Benghazi Committee through whatever lens or spin they choose; meanwhile, the Benghazi Committee is focused on, and our work is driven by, the facts.”

Committee Republicans note that only four of the 50 witnesses they’ve interviewed have had connections to Clinton. They also argue that Gowdy has stayed focused on the attacks and has passed up opportunities to refocus his inquiry on the email controversy. The panel, for example, rarely comments on the controversial emails released by the State Department, such as Wednesday night's data dump.

“Trey has bent backwards and forwards and done somersaults to please the minority,” said Benghazi panel member Lynn Westmoreland. “And in fact he has even been criticized by some of his own members on not being tough enough."

The Georgia Republican said McCarthy misspoke, saying “I know what [McCarthy] was trying to say, but I don’t think he made it clear.”

But he accused Clinton backers of playing “gotcha” — taking the issue out of context and hammering it over and over and over again.

“The Bill Clinton-Hillary Clinton-Democratic strategy is: If you can’t fix the problem, shift the blame,” he said.

Out of context or not, Democrats and Clinton’s supporters got a much-needed boost from McCarthy’s quote — and they’re planning to run with it.

“[B]y admitting — in fact sir by bragging — that the [committee] is little more than a partisan cudgel intended to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, you have pulled back the curtain on your own party’s abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer funds to advance a nakedly political goal,” Brock, one of Clinton’s most vocal backers, wrote to McCarthy, asking him to withdraw from the speaker's race. “It’s abundantly clear that you intend to run your office like an annex of the [RNC]. … Frankly, that is evidence enough that you are unfit to lead.”

There's no indication that McCarthy's comments would hurt his leadership campaign. Indeed, Cummings said Thursday he is "not naïve in thinking Republicans will cease their political attacks on Secretary Clinton” and stop their probe altogether.

But that doesn't mean they won't whip out the new ammo McCarthy served them. In an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton that is set to air on MSNBC this week, Clinton called the quote “deeply distressing.”

“When I hear a statement like that, which demonstrates unequivocally that this was always meant to be a partisan political exercise,” Clinton said, “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.”