Benghazi Report Released by Democrats Ahead of GOP, Says Clinton Not at Fault

Democrats sitting on the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued a report on Monday that clears then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in the 2012 terror attacks that killed four Americans — a move that preempted the forthcoming Republican-led committee report expected to be extremely critical of Clinton.

Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, wrote that it was necessary to release a separate report because Republicans refused to issue a bipartisan report that incorporated opinions shared by Democrats on the committee, according to CNN.com.

"We are issuing our own report today because, after spending more than two years and $7 million in taxpayer funds in one of the longest and most partisan congressional investigations in history, it is long past time for the select committee to conclude its work," Democrats said in the 339-page report.

The two-year probe was initially set up by then-House Speaker John Boehner to clarify conflicting accounts of what happened in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, when heavily armed Islamic militants launched a coordinated attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission, as well as the later mortar rounds launched at a CIA outpost a mile away. Amb. J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attacks, making it the first time a U.S. ambassador was killed in the line of duty since 1979, when Amb. Adolph Dubs was killed in Kabul.

Although the report is ostensibly the outcome of the probe into the Benghazi events — including how it may have been prevented — it also includes a 45-page indictment of the process and predispositions of the committee led by Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.

"We have been hampered in our work by the ongoing Republican obsession with conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality," read the Democratic report. "Rather than reject these conspiracy theories in the absence of evidence — or in the face of hard facts — Select Committee Republicans embraced them and turned them into a political crusade."

The report's authors argue that the Pentagon could not have done anything on the night of the attacks in Benghazi that would have saved the lives of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The Republicans on the committee have accused the Obama administration of failing to deploy military assets to rescue the Americans. While the report concludes that State Department security measures in Benghazi were "woefully inadequate," it clears Clinton of ever having personally denied requests for additional security.

The report includes March testimony from Gen. David Petraeus, who was the CIA director at the time of the attack, quoting him as saying, "I'm still not absolutely certain what absolutely took place, whether it was a mix of people that are demonstrating with attackers in there, whether this is an organized demonstration to launch an attack, whether ... there was a protest and it grew out of the protest."

A large portion of the Democrats' report criticize the Republicans for using the investigation as a political attack on Clinton, as she makes her run for the White House in 2016. Gowdy and the GOP have routinely denied the investigation was politically motivated and a spokesperson for the committee said it is the Democrats who are singularly focused on Clinton.

"As Chairman Gowdy has said, this is not about one person," GOP spokesman Matt Wolking told USA Today. "This investigation is about the four brave Americans we lost in Libya: (Ambassador) Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. That is how the majority has conducted its thorough investigation, and we look forward to revealing the new information we have uncovered to the families and the American people."

The Democratic report said history will not judge the two-year investigation nor its committee kindly.

"Decades in the future, historians will look back on this investigation as a case study in how not to conduct a credible investigation," the Democratic members wrote. "They will showcase the proliferation of Republican abuses as a chief example of what happens when politicians are allowed to use unlimited taxpayer dollars — and the formidable power of Congress — to attack their political foes."

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