Mary Troyan

USA Today

WASHINGTON — The special congressional investigation into the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi is officially over now that the panel filed its final report the day before the House adjourned for the year.

The Select Committee on Benghazi initially released its findings in June but remained in place for months afterward trying to declassify supporting documents like emails and interview transcripts for public release.

The final report, not including dissenting views from committee Democrats, clocks in at more than 322,000 words. It was added to the official House record without fanfare on Dec. 7 by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the panel’s chairman.

The panel, which spent more than $7.8 million over two and a half years, disbanded at the end of the 114th Congress, before a new Congress begins in January.

The special committee was created in May 2014 to investigate the terrorist attacks at the U.S. compound in eastern Libya where four Americans died, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

In June, the Benghazi Committee report was endorsed by the Republican committee members but not the Democrats. It severely criticized military, CIA and Obama administration officials for their response as the attacks unfolded and their subsequent explanations to the American people. It accused the government of incompetence at various levels, including a failure to deploy needed military assets, CIA intelligence reports that were “rife with errors,” and misguided planning even in the midst of the violence. The report did not single out wrongdoing by then-secretary of State Hillary Clinton, although some Republicans on the panel alleged that overall concern for her political future influenced and hampered some of the decision-making surrounding policy in Libya.

Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State was revealed as part of the Benghazi investigation, but the committee did not investigate whether the setup led to improper handling of classified information. The FBI declined to pursue criminal charges regarding the email system, but it was a major issue in the 2016 presidential election.

Gowdy on Monday called the report the “final, definitive accounting” of the Benghazi attacks.

“The committee is proud to have been able to tell the story of the ingenuity and bravery displayed by our nation’s heroes in Benghazi, who banded together to save one another, when no other help was ever on the way,” Gowdy said.

Democrats contended all along that the committee was a political effort to taint Clinton, an allegation that got some traction when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News that because of the committee, "her numbers are dropping."

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said Monday that the final report was a “desperate rehash.”

“Republicans voted on this partisan report five months ago, but delayed filing it and completing the committee until after the election,” Cummings said. “Republicans promised a process that was fair and bipartisan, but the American people got exactly the opposite.”

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