The Hillary Clinton campaign has dismissed the release of House Republicans' Benghazi attacks report as an attempt to “hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”
The report says U.S. State Department officials, including presumptive Democratic nominee Clinton, should’ve been on alert because there was intelligence leading up to the attacks suggesting the diplomatic consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi were not safe. The 2012 Libya terror attacks killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
In a statement, the Clinton campaign slammed the Benghazi Select Committee for releasing parts of the report overnight and argued committee Republicans are “finishing their work in the same, partisan way that we've seen from them since the beginning.”
“In leaking out select portions from their report in the middle of the night, without even allowing some of the committee's own members to see it, the Republican members are clearly seeking to avoid any fact-checking of their discredited, conspiracy theories,” Brian Fallon, spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said in the statement.
"After more than two years and more than $7 million in taxpayer funds, the Committee report has not found anything to contradict the conclusions of the multiple, earlier investigations,” the statement from the Clinton campaign read.
The statement went on to say that the report is an attempted takedown of Clinton ahead of the general election, pointing to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s comments on Fox News and a former staffer’s claims that he was fired from the Benghazi committee for refusing to focus solely on Clinton.
“This Committee's chief goal is to politicize the deaths of four brave Americans in order to try to attack the Obama administration and hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign,” the statement read.
Fallon also blasted the committee as a “partisan sham” on Twitter just hours ahead of when the report was released.
During a press conference today on Capitol Hill, Chairman of the Benghazi Select Committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, fought back accusations that the report was partisan, arguing that the Republicans’ report mentions Clinton far less than the Democrats' report released yesterday. The Republicans’ report came to no new conclusions from previous investigations about Clinton’s wrongdoing in the Benghazi attack.
“My audience are fair-minded Americans who want to know what happened to their fellow citizens and they can draw their own conclusion,” Rep. Gowdy said today in a press conference on Capitol Hill, adding, “If you can read this report and you believe on the last page of the report that it is about one person instead of about four people, then there is nothing I can say that is going to diffuse you of that.”
The RNC released a statement following the press conference, saying, “Hillary Clinton was in charge, knew the risks and did nothing. Together the report’s findings make clear we cannot afford to let Hillary Clinton be our next commander-in-chief.”
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has not commented on the findings.
However, less than a week ago, Trump tweeted that Clinton lies to Benghazi families.
Trump has also praised Chairman Gowdy as a “seasoned prosecutor” when Gowdy was first appointed to lead the committee, but then later criticized Gowdy in 2015 on Twitter after he endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio for president.
ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Justin Fishel and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
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