Benghazi Committee Democrats to Release Full Interview With Top Hillary Clinton Aide

Demo­crats on the House Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Benghazi will re­lease the tran­script of the pan­el’s closed-door in­ter­view last month with Cheryl Mills, a close con­fid­ante of Hil­lary Clin­ton’s who served as her chief of staff at the State De­part­ment.

In a let­ter to Trey Gowdy, the pan­el’s GOP lead­er, Demo­crats ac­cuse Re­pub­lic­ans of se­lect­ively leak­ing in­ac­cur­ate in­form­a­tion from the Septem­ber 3 in­ter­view.

“It has be­come ob­vi­ous that the only way to ad­equately cor­rect the pub­lic re­cord is to re­lease the com­plete tran­script of the com­mit­tee’s in­ter­view with Ms. Mills,” the let­ter states.

Demo­crats have pre­vi­ously—and un­suc­cess­fully—urged Re­pub­lic­ans to re­lease the full tran­scripts of closed-door in­ter­views of some wit­nesses, not­ably Sid­ney Blu­menth­al, a close Clin­ton ally who cor­res­pon­ded fre­quently with Clin­ton over her private email ac­count while she led State dur­ing Obama’s first term.

The de­cision to uni­lat­er­ally re­lease the tran­script ar­rives just days after widely cir­cu­lated com­ments by House Speak­er Kev­in Mc­Carthy, who is run­ning to re­place out­go­ing House Speak­er John Boehner, that have put Re­pub­lic­ans on the de­fens­ive about the Benghazi in­vest­ig­a­tion.

“Every­body thought Hil­lary Clin­ton was un­beat­able right? But we put to­geth­er a Benghazi spe­cial com­mit­tee. A se­lect com­mit­tee. What are her num­bers today?”Mc­Carthy said on Fox News late Tues­day night.

Demo­crats cite the com­ments in the open­ing of their let­ter as proof of their as­ser­tion that the com­mit­tee is de­signed as a polit­ic­al weapon.

The let­ter states: “On Septem­ber 29, 2015, Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Kev­in Mc­Carthy ad­mit­ted dur­ing a na­tion­ally tele­vised in­ter­view on Fox News that House Re­pub­lic­ans cre­ated the Benghazi Se­lect Com­mit­tee from the very be­gin­ning to wage a tax­pay­er-fun­ded polit­ic­al cam­paign against Hil­lary Clin­ton’s bid for pres­id­ent. Ob­vi­ously, this is an un­eth­ic­al ab­use of mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars and a crass as­sault on the memor­ies of the four Amer­ic­ans who were killed in Benghazi. Al­though some Re­pub­lic­ans at­temp­ted to ex­plain away Rep. Mc­Carthy’s ad­mis­sion, it re­flec­ted ex­actly what has been go­ing on with­in the Se­lect Com­mit­tee for the past year-and-a-half.”

Demo­crats, in the let­ter, say they do not take the de­cision to re­lease the Mills tran­script lightly, but say it stems from mul­tiple leaks from the com­mit­tee in­volving mul­tiple wit­nesses. They are sig­nal­ing that re­leases of tran­script from more closed-door in­ter­views are in the off­ing.

“We be­lieve it is time to be­gin re­leas­ing the tran­scripts of in­ter­views con­duc­ted by the Se­lect Com­mit­tee in or­der to cor­rect the pub­lic re­cord after nu­mer­ous in­ac­cur­ate Re­pub­lic­an leaks, and we plan to be­gin this pro­cess by re­leas­ing the full tran­script of Ms. Mills’s in­ter­view,” the let­ter states.

But the re­lease won’t be im­me­di­ate. In­stead Demo­crats say they’re giv­ing Re­pub­lic­ans, the State De­part­ment, and Mills’s law­yers five days to identi­fy any in­form­a­tion from the tran­script that should be with­held from the pub­lic.

Gowdy’s of­fice did not provide im­me­di­ate com­ment on the let­ter that Demo­crats de­livered late this morn­ing.

Demo­crats re­leased a few por­tions of the Mills in­ter­view Monday that they say con­tra­dict the “polit­ic­al nar­rat­ive” that Re­pub­lic­ans have tried to cre­ate about the 2012 Benghazi at­tacks, which claimed the lives of four Amer­ic­ans in­clud­ing Am­bas­sad­or Chris­toph­er Stevens.

For in­stance, in one se­quence Mills, in re­sponse to a ques­tion about wheth­er Clin­ton re­ques­ted that mil­it­ary as­sets be de­ployed, re­called a video­con­fer­ence in which Clin­ton “said we need to be tak­ing whatever steps we can, to do whatever we can to se­cure our people” and that “she was pretty em­phat­ic about want­ing whatever to be done and whatever were as­sets that could be de­ployed, if that was both ef­fect­ive and pos­sible to be done.”

The vow to re­lease the tran­scripts ar­rives on the same day that Clin­ton offered sharp words about the Benghazi com­mit­tee. She will testi­fy be­fore the pan­el on Oc­to­ber 22 in what will be among the closely watched events of the 2016 elec­tion cycle thus far.

“This com­mit­tee was set up, as they have ad­mit­ted, for the pur­pose of mak­ing a par­tis­an polit­ic­al is­sue out of the deaths of four Amer­ic­ans,” Clin­ton said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Asked if the com­mit­tee should be dis­ban­ded, as sev­er­al seni­or Demo­crat­ic law­makers have called for, Clin­ton said: “I have to say that now that they have ad­mit­ted it’s a polit­ic­al, par­tis­an com­mit­tee for the sole pur­pose of go­ing after me, not try­ing to make our dip­lo­mats who serve in dan­ger­ous areas safer, that’s up to the Con­gress.”