The Democrats are prepared on a number of fronts for Thursday’s appearance of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They will be working on a number of areas as they work to control the narrative of what should be a long day on Capitol Hill.
In an extensive interview yesterday afternoon Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, he told Reuters that Democrats want to make sure former Secretary of State Clinton is treated fairly during Thursday’s testimony, but don’t want to keep giving legitimacy to the panel.
Schiff said that the Democrats on the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, may leave the panel after former Clinton testifies. They may take that action as soon as this week.
“How much longer does it make sense for us to continue to participate?” Schiff told Reuters.
“We lend legitimacy, by being there, to a committee that really has none,” he added.
The main focus of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and the seven others committee’s and bipartisan hearings before this one was to find out why four Americans were killed when militants attacked a U.S. consulate in the Libyan city in 2012.
Schiff said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the committee has often leaked damaging information to try to hurt Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
“The way that this committee has operated is by leak of damaging information with only one objective, and that is all the leaks have a common denominator, all of the leaks are designed to hurt Secretary Clinton,” he said Sunday.
“The fact is after 17 months, four-and-a-half million dollars, we have nothing new to tell the families, apart from that there was a private email server,” he added. “That doesn’t tell us anything about Benghazi.”
Meanwhile, as part of a multi front attack against the Republican led Benghazi Select Committee, the super PAC backing Hillary Clinton’s campaign will release a 140-page book of opposition research Wednesday, obtained exclusively by CNN, that impugns the character of Republicans on the committee.
David Brock, the founder of the group Correct the Record will also give a speech later today lambasting the committee as his super PAC readies a rapid response team of 30 employees to staff a war room during Clinton’s testimony Thursday, expected to last several hours.
The Clinton campaign has armed surrogates with talking points, instructing them to characterize the hearing as “a partisan charade whose main goal is attacking Hillary Clinton.” Another suggests Clinton supporters stress that Clinton agreed to testify “because she wants to honor the memory of the four brave Americans who died at Benghazi by making sure we do everything possible to learn from this tragedy.”
