The chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi said Wednesday that Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was “wrong” on recent comments regarding the committee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s sagging poll numbers and that Mr. McCarthy “screwed up.”
“Well, he is a friend, but my first reaction is, ’Kevin, you’re wrong,’ ” Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Mr. Gowdy said Mr. McCarthy has apologized “as profusely as a human being can apologize.”
“What I tell folks back home is I don’t care how many times you put an earpiece in your ear and looked into a camera, you still screw up, and Kevin screwed up,” Mr. Gowdy said.
For his part, Mr. McCarthy defended the work of Mr. Gowdy’s committee Wednesday while acknowledging he could have been clearer in his framing of the issue.
“What I tell folks back home is I don’t care how many times you put an earpiece in your ear and looked into a camera, you still screw up, and Kevin screwed up,” he said.
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In a recent Fox News interview, Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, said: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.”
Mr. McCarthy has since walked back the comments, saying Wednesday the mission of the committee is only to find the truth about the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack.
“Let’s be very clear: Benghazi’s not political,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters. “It was created for one purpose and one purpose only: to find the truth on behalf of the families of the four dead Americans — period.”
Democrats have seized on the remarks, and a new ad from Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign featuring part of the original comments actually ran right before Mr. Gowdy’s television appearance. She is set to testify before Mr. Gowdy’s committee on Oct. 22.
Mr. McCarthy said Wednesday the integrity of Mr. Gowdy and the work that’s been done “has never come into question, and it never should be. Stop playing politics.”
“I could have been more clear in my description of what was going forward, and I’ve stated that,” he said. “But there’s only one reason why that committee was created — period.”
House Speaker John A. Boehner followed up by saying that “there’s not one American who, in the course of their lifetime, wouldn’t rather have the opportunity to say words over again.”
“There’s not one American that hasn’t had this experience,” said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican. “Benghazi’s committee is about what happened before, during and after a terrorist attack in Libya where four Americans died. The American people deserve the truth about what happened, period.”
Mr. Gowdy said when Mr. Boehner first called him, he never mentioned Mrs. Clinton’s name and that Mr. Gowdy hasn’t mentioned her name in three public hearings.
“She was the secretary of state at all relevant times so of course you have to talk to her, but we didn’t start with her and we’re not going to end with her,” Mr. Gowdy said.
Asked how to “unring that bell,” Mr. Gowdy said that “you have to do a really good job on October the 22nd and you have to ask folks to look at what you’ve done and not what others have said.”
“Kevin is not on the Benghazi committee,” he said of Mr. McCarthy, who is running to replace Mr. Boehner as speaker. “Kevin, I’m sure, doesn’t know that we’ve interviewed 41 witnesses that none of the previous committees have interviewed, including seven eyewitnesses. So I would just respectfully ask folks to look at what we’ve done and to look at October the 22nd, and you’ll see a fact-centric, professional, fair hearing, and that’s all I can do, is ask people to focus on actions and not words.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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