With less than three weeks until former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to testify before the congressional Select Committee on Benghazi, her presidential campaign and her Democratic supporters are intensifying efforts to discredit the probe, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, California Republican, is giving a huge boost to their cause.
The Clinton campaign aired a TV ad Tuesday featuring Mr. McCarthy’s remark from last week that implied the committee was designed to target Mrs. Clinton. The spot opens with a male voice-over announcer declaring, “The Republicans finally admit it.”
The ad uses footage from an NBC News report that characterized Mr. McCarthy as saying “the committee investigating Benghazi and Clinton’s emails was created to destroy her candidacy.” It then presents video of Mr. McCarthy’s remarks on Fox News that impugned the committee’s work.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. What are her numbers today?” Mr. McCarthy says in the video clip.
Over footage of Mrs. Clinton on the stump, the announcer says: “The Republicans have spent millions attacking Hillary because she’s fighting for everything they oppose, from affordable health care to equal pay. She’ll never stop fighting for you, and the Republicans know it.”
Mr. McCarthy’s flub added ammunition to a long-standing line of attack from Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic supporters. They have claimed the committee was politically motivated since it was created in May 2014 to probe the terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Mr. McCarthy has scrambled to rephrase the comment to bolster the committee and shore up support in his bid to be the next speaker of the House. He issued a statement Tuesday that blamed Mrs. Clinton for her own troubles.
“The mission of the Select Committee on Benghazi is to find the truth — period,” he said. “The serious questions Secretary Clinton faces are due entirely to her own decision to put classified information at risk and endanger our national security.”
The committee’s investigation has hurt Mrs. Clinton’s presidential run.
Investigators uncovered Mrs. exclusive use of a private email account for official business as secretary of state, which provoked a cascade of questions about the secretive email setup that started to dog her campaign and prompted an FBI investigation into her handling of classified material that conceivably could result in criminal charges.
Amid the swirl of the email scandal, Mrs. Clinton’s sky-high poll numbers have tumbled and a majority of voters say they don’t trust her, though she remains the odd-on favorite to win her party’s nomination.
Mrs. Clinton’s scheduled testimony Oct. 22 remains a serious challenge for her. She will have to navigate a minefield of questions, not just about her email setup, but also about security measures in Benghazi, the response to the attack and the Obama administration’s initial claims that the armed assault on the compound was a spontaneous riot in response to a YouTube video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad.
The last time Mrs. Clinton testified about Benghazi, when she appeared before a Senate panel in 2013, she came across as shrill and defensive.
“We had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?” she shouted over questions by Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican.
Anything Mrs. Clinton and her allies can do this time to shift the focus onto committee Republicans will help her weather the hearing.
In the wake of Mr. McCarthy’s gaffe, Capitol Hill Democrats have called for disbanding the special committee. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said Republicans’ misuse of the committee could violate ethics rules and threatened to yank Democratic members from the committee.
The Democrats have stayed on the committee.
The Agenda Project Action Fund, a liberal policy and activist group in Washington, began circulating a petition to pressure lawmakers to file an ethics complaint against the committee’s Republicans.
“Americans deserve to know exactly what happened in the lead up to the Select Committee on Benghazi and who played a part in this contemptible misuse of government,” the group said in an email to supporters.
House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, said the committee has been a “discredit to the House of Representatives” for far too long.
“Longer than Watergate,” he said. “And it’s come up with nothing, nada, zero.”
His attack was a revised version of claims by Mrs. Clinton that it was “the longest-running congressional investigation ever.” The claim was debunked by the fact check organization PolitiFact.
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi committee, has spearheaded an offensive against the length of the investigation, leaks of closed-door testimony to the press and the focus on Mrs. Clinton.
The five Democrats on the committee this week began releasing lengthy excerpts from closed-door testimony of Cheryl Mills, who served as Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, saying they wanted to “correct the record” after selective leaks of her testimony that they said were intended to malign Mrs. Clinton.
The Democrats alerted Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the committee, with a letter that gave him until Friday to identify any sensitive information in Ms. Mills’ testimony before the release of the full transcript.
“Despite claims that the Committee would be run with integrity, Republicans have engaged in a series of selective leaks of inaccurate and incomplete information in an effort to attack Secretary Clinton with unsubstantiated or previously debunked allegations,” the Democrats wrote.
They noted Mr. McCarthy’s remark as evidence of Republican scheming against Mrs. Clinton.
The testimony released included Ms. Mills’ insistence that neither she nor Mrs. Clinton attempted to influence the accountability review board investigation into the Benghazi attack. According to the transcript, she told committee investigators that Mrs. Clinton wanted board members who “could give hard medicine if that was what was needed.”
Benghazi committee spokesman Jamal Ware said the Democrats were trying to undermine the investigation.
He said the committee was keeping testimony confidential to protect the integrity of the investigation.
“By selectively leaking and spinning parts of Secretary Clinton’s top aide Cheryl Mills’ transcript, Democrats have shown their nakedly political motivation, willingness to violate the letter and spirit of House Rules, and their desire to defend Secretary Clinton without regard for the integrity of the investigation,” he said in a statement.
“It is one thing to merely sit idly by while others do serious work, it is quite another to attempt to undercut that work with selective leaks in violation of House Rules,” Mr. Ware said.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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