At Benghazi Hearing, Shouting Match Over Hillary Clinton’s Emails
Billed by Republicans leaders of the select House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks as a critical moment in its inquiry, the long-awaited appearance by Mrs. Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, served largely as a replay of highly contested arguments from previous congressional hearings, press examinations and Sunday-morning talk shows.
Watch the Benghazi Hearing in 3 Minutes
Highlights from the House hearing about an attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, when Hillary Rodham Clinton was secretary of state. The hearing began at 10 a.m. and, with breaks, lasted until 9 p.m.
By QUYNHANH DO, MICHAEL LESTER and PAUL VOLPE on October 22, 2015. Photo by Zach Gibson/The New York Times.Watch in Times Video »
But the long day of often-testy exchanges between committee members and their prominent witness revealed little new information about an episode that has been the subject of seven previous investigations, and that Republicans have long seen as a blemish on Mrs. Clinton’s record that could be exploited as she sought the presidency.
Held in the ornate room that is home to the House Ways and Means Committee, the marathon hearing began at 10 a.m. and, with breaks, lasted until 9 p.m. It provided Republicans with a national audience as they questioned Mrs. Clinton, often using her own words from thousands of pages of emails obtained by the committee. But it also gave Mrs. Clinton her first opportunity since early 2013 to respond directly to her fiercest critics, and she used the platform to offer lengthy explanations of her diplomatic efforts around the world and her actions before and after the Benghazi attacks.
Perhaps stung by recent admissions that the pursuit of Mrs. Clinton’s emails was politically motivated, Republican lawmakers on the panel for the most part avoided any mention of her use of a private email server. Still, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio did raise the issue late in the hearing, accusing her of repeatedly changing her account of the server and why she had used it. In a heated exchange, Mrs. Clinton repeated that she had made a mistake in using a private email account, but insisted that she never sent or received anything marked classified and had sought to be transparent by publicly releasing her emails.
But committee Republicans focused most of their time on accusations that Mrs. Clinton had ignored the security needs in Benghazi in the months before the attacks, a charge that she repeatedly rejected.
Throughout the day, Democrats on the committee portrayed Republicans as the leaders of a partisan crusade against Mrs. Clinton, while Republicans angrily responded that Democrats were seeking to block a legitimate inquiry into fatal security lapses at an American diplomatic outpost. Shortly before the committee broke for lunch, a shouting match erupted between Mr. Gowdy and two Democrats — Adam B. Schiff and Elijah E. Cummings — over the committee’s focus on Mrs. Clinton’s email exchanges with Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to her husband and a personal friend.
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