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Trey Gowdy Benghazi Probe: Can GOP Committee Chair’s ‘New Evidence’ Derail Hillary’s Presidential Run, Restore Trust In Party?

By Bradley Ryder
Published on: 13:13 PST, Oct 18, 2015

Rep. Trey Gowdy has a tall order, and all the world is looking at him to salvage the damage done to his Republican Party.

With Hillary Clinton set to testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Thursday, the chairperson said new evidence may shed light on what happened during the 2012 attacks. Ironically, in that same statement, Congressman Gowdy said the newly-obtained information in the Benghazi investigation is not related to Secretary Clinton, according to Fox News.

Democratic opponents are still convinced that the probe is politically motivated and designed to derail Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Elections. Gowdy spoke with CBS’ Face the Nation about the latest developments ahead of the hearing.

“We have found new facts that have absolutely nothing to do with her. I get that people don’t want to talk about that. But the seven [Republican] members of my committee are much more focused on the four dead Americans than we are anyone’s presidential aspirations.”

The South Carolina lawmaker heads up a bipartisan panel of 12 members charged with investigating the events on September 11, 2012, that involved attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya. During the siege, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the facility were killed.

Rep. Gowdy said the new information obtained consists of emails that belonged to Stevens at the time of his death. Moreover, there are apparently dozens more vetted witnesses scheduled to provide testimony about the event that led to the four fatalities. Trey Gowdy said Clinton, during a high-profile component of the investigation, takes a backseat to more pressing committee matters: Chris Stevens’ emails. In short, she is but one witness or layer to a complex puzzle. To all critics, he says to “shut up.”

Gowdy does point out that the former First Lady and other members of the Obama Administration had an inordinate amount of interest in the politics of the Benghazi inquiry, instead of what led to the unfortunate deaths.

In one email communication, Gowdy said even Stevens quipped that he and other colleagues at the outpost “should ask another government to pay for our security upgrades because our government isn’t willing to do it.”

Gowdy emphasized that the answers to what occurred in Benghazi are contained in Stevens’ emails.

Over the 17-month investigation, the committee learned that Hillary Clinton constructed a private server at her residence and used it for official State Department business. Reportedly, she has turned over thousands of emails, but many claim the server was the target of potential hacking.

Presently, the FBI is assisting with the probe, but it’s unclear in what capacity, other than to rule out that any information considered a threat to national security was compromised. Clinton has since apologized and admitted making a bad decision. However, she denies wrongdoing and putting the country in jeopardy.

Gowdy’s committee has been accused of using the examination as a way to ruin Clinton’s chances of ascending to the White House.

GOP House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy came under fire recently over statements made weeks ago. Then, the former presumptive next Speaker of the House (to replace outgoing John Boehner) said that Clinton’s poll numbers among potential voters dropped due to the email scandal.

Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y. dropped a bombshell on his party this week, according to a Breitbart report. During a chat on “Keeler in the Morning,” a radio show in New York, Hanna suggested the committee was hell-bent on targeting the person, and is less interested in the cause of the problem.

“This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton.”

Democrats pointed out that the select committee probe is unprecedented in the time it’s taking to arrive at answers for the American people. Comparatively speaking, the probe involving Hillary has lasted longer than Watergate, which involved former President Richard Nixon.

Will Trey Gowdy restore credibility in the committee and arrive at some level of consensus about what took place three years ago? What impact, if any, will the “new evidence” have on the investigation? And finally, is it even too late to prevent Hillary from prevailing had that been the aim of the Republicans?

[Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

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