Getty Ex-staffer says Benghazi panel is on partisan mission to destroy Hillary Clinton

The House Select Committee on Benghazi is reeling again after a fired GOP investigator accused the Republican majority of conducting a politically motivated probe of Hillary Clinton — accusations the right says are an attempt to get the committee to pay him a settlement.

Major Bradley Podliska, who left the panel in June after about 10 months on the job, told CNN on Sunday he was fired because he refused to conduct a partisan probe of the former secretary of state. He said the panel has veered off its original course to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that left four Americans dead — instead zeroing in on Clinton following news that she used private email while secretary of state.


But the Benghazi panel on Sunday contended that Podliska was removed from his job for different reasons. It said he refused to stand down on a "partisan" project that focused on Clinton and the Susan Rice talking points on Benghazi. It also said he has has never raised Clinton as a reason for his termination in talks over the past few weeks.

His allegation is not mentioned in a preliminary Sept. 11 legal document laying out his case against the panel, according to a copy of that document obtained by POLITICO.

"As this process prepares to wrap, he has demanded money from the Committee, the Committee has refused to pay him, and he has now run to the press with his new salacious allegations about Secretary Clinton,” said Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) in a statement. "What the record makes clear is he himself was focused on Clinton and was instructed to stop, and that issues with his conduct and performance were noted on the record as far back as April."

The panel says he was terminated for "cause" and "because he himself manifested improper partiality and animus in his investigative work.” He denied the allegations through a lawyer.

His new accusation is sure to feed the partisan fire surrounding the committee, which has been on defense since Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) bragged almost two weeks ago that the committee’s work has hurt Clinton on the 2016 campaign trail. Clinton is scheduled to testify before the committee Oct. 22.

Podliska is a Republican and believes the Benghazi investigation holds merit, making his criticism of the panel all the more stinging for the committee. A lawyer for Podliska said he was not partisan and never authorized anyone to go after Clinton.

"I'm scared. I'm nervous. I know that this is, you know, I'm going up against powerful people in Washington. But at the end of the day I need to live with myself," he told CNN. "I told my wife, I will view myself as a coward if I don't do the right thing here."

Democrats and the Clinton campaign blasted out the story to reporters as proof that the panel is a political circus.

“These are explosive allegations,” said campaign spokesman Brian Fallon in a statement. “This Republican whistleblower's account from inside the Benghazi Committee may provide the most definitive proof to date that this taxpayer-funded investigation has been a partisan sham from the start.”

Podliska, an Air Force Reserve intelligence officer, plans to file a lawsuit against the panel next month for wrongful termination. Podliska said the termination was twofold: because of his unwillingness to focus his probe solely on Clinton and State but also for taking a leave of absence to fulfill military service obligations.

"I was fired for going on military service, and I was fired for trying to conduct an objective, nonpartisan, thorough investigation," Podliska said.

The military service reprisal accusation is the only one mentioned in his Sept. 11 dispute notice to the panel.

Podliska in the spring informed the panel he was being called up for more than 30 days of active duty in Germany, which he would have to serve in bits and pieces. He said the panel's staff director when informed of the matter simply wrote back "wow," and he says he was never treated the same after he returned from active duty.

The panel also denied what it called an “outlandish” allegation, noting that his former supervisor is an ex-judge advocate general of the United States Army who would hardly be "anti-military."

The committee says Podliska was let go in part because he had classified information on an unsecured system and because he tried to “develop and direct Committee resources to a PowerPoint ‘hit piece’ on members of the Obama Administration — including Secretary Clinton — that bore no relationship whatsoever to the Committee’s current investigative tone, focus or investigative plan.”

Emails obtained by POLITICO suggest that he sought to task interns with obligations, but one of his lawyers, Joe Napiltonia said, said he never authorized the intern to do a “hit piece” on Hillary Clinton.

“Mr. Podliska has always maintained that Secretary Clinton has some answering to do, but he never authorized anyone to disparage Hillary Clinton,” he said in an email.

On Tuesday, June 9, Podliska wrote to the panel's intern coordinator: "I'd like the interns to complete the following tasks for me." He listed three tasks, including creating a PowerPoint on all the talking points that came out of the administration following the attack and a "master video" that incorporated something Clinton said in September, emails from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes and the controversial "talking points" Rice made on TV.

Conservatives have long accused the administration of trying to cover up the cause of the attack in Benghazi, which Rice blamed on a protest rather than a terrorist attack.

But the panel says Podliska's idea was too partisan and was rejected. When he followed up on the email about a week later, the intern coordinator forwarded the message to the deputy staff director.

All were copied on the deputy staff director's email reply, which added on staff director Phil Kiko: "Not approved for reasons previously explained to Brad [Podliska]."

“Directly contrary to his brand new assertion, the employee actually was terminated, in part, because he himself manifested improper partiality and animus in his investigative work,” the committee statement says.

The Benghazi panel by and large has not been out front on the Clinton emails issue. Rather, Senate Chairmen Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on the Homeland Committee and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on the Judiciary panel have taken the lead subpoenaing documents from Platte River Networks and other IT firms that oversaw Clinton’s server while prodding the intelligence community and the FBI to look into whether classified information was mishandled.

The closest the committee has come to the email probe was in September, when the panel called Clinton’s former top tech adviser, Bryan Pagliano, in for questioning about her email arrangement. The panel said the main focus of that interview was simply ensuring that all Clinton’s work emails were turned over, particularly after uncovering several Clinton undisclosed emails from another source that they say should have been turned over.

