AP Photo House Benghazi committee on the defensive With accusations that the panel broke the law in a dispute with an ex-staffer, the problems have been piling up since Kevin McCarthy's gaffe.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi is getting slammed with accusations that it’s targeting Hillary Clinton with a partisan investigation — but now there’s a new allegation.

Attorneys for a former GOP investigator contend that the committee broke the law when it divulged sensitive details of the staffer’s firing on Sunday, accusing him of bad behavior, keeping classified information on an unclassified system and trying to tease out settlement money.


The committee released the information about the termination of Bradley Podliska in an effort to deflect fallout from an interview he gave to CNN in which he joined a chorus of critics who say the Benghazi investigation has become a partisan witch hunt against Clinton.

Podliska said he was fired for taking military leave and because he disagreed with repurposing the investigation to narrowly focus on the State Department — an accusation the committee denies.

“We are concerned that in his own self-defense Chairman [Trey] Gowdy is making false statements and breaking the federal law that bans the disclosure of private settlement negotiations,” Podliska’s legal team said in a statement. “Chairman Gowdy disclosed specific information about private mediation between the Committee and Major Podliska—disclosures that violate the Congressional Accountability Act’s ban on disclosing information regarding settlement negotiations.”

The allegations from Podliska’s legal team cap a rough two weeks for the panel that started when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) boasted the committee’s work has hurt Clinton in the polls — a statement that Democrats seized on as evidence that the investigation is partisan warfare in disguise.

That helped trigger a steady stream of criticism that’s had the committee in a defensive posture for days. The latest batch of anti-Benghazi “talking points” distributed to Clinton’s allies Tuesday, for example, slammed the committee as a “partisan plot … for attacking Hillary Clinton [that] went all the way up to the Speaker of the House himself,” according to a copy of the talking points obtained by POLITICO.

It’s all going to come to a head next week, when Clinton herself makes a high-stakes appearance before the panel on Oct. 22. Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican and former federal prosecutor, will also be under the microscope as he tries to rebut accusations of partisanship.

And now Gowdy also has to contend with allegations that his committee may have broken the law.

The chairman has long denied that his panel is aimed at Clinton and likewise denies Podliska’s accusations that it treated him unfairly, waving off the allegations as a desperate attempt by a disgruntled employee to get a settlement.

The panel also says it didn’t violate any rules when it offered a defense against Podliska's accusations.

“The ludicrousness of a former employee who has spread himself across the news media over the weekend complaining about confidentiality ought to be obvious,” said a Benghazi panel spokesman who asked not to be named. “The committee will vigorously defend itself against these and any other false claims and has nothing further to add at this time.”

But the mounting criticism has put pressure on the committee to justify its more than year-old investigation of the 2012 attack that killed four Americans.

“Time to wrap it up and tie a bow on it. … Report what findings you have. … And then stop,” reads a USA Today editorial — one of several in recent days that have called for the committee to disband. “Your inquest is not shedding much light on the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2012, when terrorists stormed the compound, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. It is doing even less for the reputation of Congress and the party that controls both of its chambers.”

Talking points that Democrats have been circulating for weeks — including the panel’s $4.5 million cost and a claim that the investigation has run longer than Watergate — are all of a sudden making front-page headline stories, including in The New York Times. And Podliska is getting plenty of air time repeating stories about the panel’s “Wine Wednesdays” and a gun-buying club.

“With all due respect to Chairman Gowdy, as the New York Times and CNN have reported Mr. Gowdy’s aides drank alcohol during work hours in a ‘Wine Wednesday’ club and worked together to buy Tiffany-style guns during work hours,” his lawyer repeated in a statement Tuesday.

The criticism is drowning out the panel’s work. Just last Thursday, Gowdy, in a rare public announcement, revealed that the investigation had uncovered new emails suggesting Clinton knew of her ally Sid Blumenthal’s business interests in Libya while Blumenthal encouraged her to act boldly in the Middle Eastern nation.

The announcement also alleged that Clinton forwarded the name of a confidential CIA source to staff at the State Department, which Gowdy called “some of the most protected information in our intelligence community.”

But on Tuesday — nine days out from Clinton’s highly anticipated appearance before the panel — the announcement had made few waves.

Instead, a New York Times front page story included a number of talking points that have been circulated by Democrats on the panel and were repeated in the Monday fact sheet distributed by team Clinton.

They include accusations that Gowdy had dropped a list of public hearings he’d hoped to hold with all the agencies to get a fuller picture of the security situation and U.S. policy in Libya, including one with Defense secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta. So far, the only hearing scheduled is with Clinton.

Democrats also say that Gowdy has “dropped key interviews with top defense and intelligence leaders” — including former CIA Director David Petraeus, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, and Matt Olsen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Republicans say the State Department’s slow pace in turning over emails has set back their hearing timetable. The Department, for instance, just handed over all Clinton’s Libya emails a couple of weeks ago — something the committee asked for well over a year ago.

The campaign’s talking points also said that Speaker John Boehner was at the heart of the panel’s attack on Clinton — pointing to reports that Boehner told Gowdy to take the lead on the Clinton emails issue instead of allowing, for example, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to start its own probe.

“It is disturbing that Speaker Boehner and House Republicans would politicize the deaths of four brave Americans at Benghazi for the sole purpose of trying to damage Hillary Clinton,” the talking points said.

The panel will have to consider whether to keep its current strategy, under which it operates behind closed doors and conducts all interviews in private, or try to make more of its findings public as a way to substantiate progress.