Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, testifies in front of a Senate committee in January 2013 about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
In less than a month, the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination will sit for a public grilling by a House panel investigating the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
For most candidates, this would seem disastrous. But this is actually what Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers wanted to happen.
Clinton has been under siege for more than two years for her handling of Benghazi while serving as secretary of state, as Republicans have continued to criticize her performance and question whether she could have prevented the tragedy. Clinton and her representatives have characterized the succession of probes and inquiries as a politicized witch hunt aimed at damaging a potential (and now official) Democratic presidential candidate.
Against this backdrop, the two sides traded volleys this week that ended with a letter to Clinton's lawyer Thursday from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the Benghazi panel. He announced two hearings: one on May 18 focusing on Clinton's controversial use of a private e-mail server while at State; and a second in June focused on the September 2012 attacks on two U.S. facilities in Benghazi which killed the U.S. ambassador and three others.
Clinton lawyer David E. Kendall wrote Gowdy on Wednesday to complain that the Republican-led panel's work was being dragged out unnecessarily and that Clinton would happily testify publicly. Clinton campaign manager John Podesta followed up with a statement calling the panel nakedly political by seeking to delay any findings about the Benghazi issue into the 2016 presidential election year.
In a reply to Kendall on Thursday, Gowdy said that while it is true that Clinton had volunteered to testify last fall, that would have been "woefully and now obviously premature." Her exclusive use of the unorthodox e-mail system had not yet become public, and the committee only had a fraction of the e-mails now in its possession, Gowdy wrote.
“With her cooperation and that of the State Department and administration, Secretary Clinton could be done with the Benghazi Committee before the Fourth of July,” Gowdy said in a statement. “It is necessary to call Secretary Clinton twice because the committee needs to ensure we have a complete and responsive record and all the facts before we then substantively question her on the Benghazi terrorist attacks."
He continued, “From there, as I have said countless times before, the committee investigation will go wherever the facts may lead. I have made no presumption of right or wrongdoing on anyone’s part with respects to the Benghazi terrorist attacks.”
[Clinton campaign accuses GOP of politicizing Benghazi]
Clinton — who testified at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shortly after the attacks — has said she takes ultimate responsibility because she was in charge of the department. But she and her supporters have maintained that she had no direct role or knowledge in any decision about security or other circumstances that might have made a difference. Her allies also claim that because multiple investigations have already found no scandal, Republicans are simply trying to trap or embarrass her.
The e-mail flap breathed new life into the Benghazi inquiry just before Clinton entered the race. Because she had not turned over all her e-mails when she left the department in early 2013, many that may have relevance to the Benghazi issue were not provided to Gowdy's investigators until February 2015.
Gowdy released a list of 136 questions Thursday that he said remain unanswered. Among them: When and why did she set up the e-mail system, and was it her idea or someone else's. Only eight of the questions bear directly on Benghazi.
Republicans on the committee would have preferred to have had Clinton answer the questions in private, but in the end they bowed to Democratic complaints that such a format would be unfair and allow for selective leaking by GOP lawmakers and their aides. Public hearings, Democrats hope, will make Republicans look craven and overly political in their pursuit of a potential president.
Gowdy said Thursday that a closed-door setting was considered mainly as a courtesy to Clinton if she was concerned that the session could involve personal or irrelevant e-mails.
There is little doubt that Clinton would prefer not to testify at all. But facing a GOP committee with subpoena power, she has maneuvered her way to what may be the best option for her — and for her fledgling 2016 campaign.
Anne Gearan is a national politics correspondent for The Washington Post.
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