Dueling final reports from the House Select Committee on Benghazi are being released this week. The committee majority are releasing a detailed assessment early Tuesday morning that exposes the Obama White House's lack of leadership that left our soldiers ill-equipped to face the enemy. Ahead of that report, however, bitter Democrats on the committeee have decided to release their own final report on the panel's two-year investigation - and it paints a much more positive picture of how the administration responded to the terror attack.
Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy has accused the committee's Democrats of "abject obstruction" throughout their investigation. Panelists like Rep. Elijah Cummings, Gowdy says, have threatened to leak witness transcripts in an effort to shield former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from wrongdoing.
Yet, the Democrats insisted on having a say on the committee's final report. Gowdy laughed off that demand.
Because they were blocked from adding their voice to the report, Democrats have released their own. Although their report opens with a pledge that they are releasing their own document to honor the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, you don't have to read far to realize they have little intention of finding answers for these fallen men's families. As Select Committee on Benghazi Press Secretary Matt Wolking pointed out in a press release on Monday, the Dems' report references Hillary Clinton 334 times, and the fallen Americans a combined total of 142 times. That tally, Wolking says, proves the Democrats have an "obsession" with Clinton.
The Democratic report offers a timeline of events from the night of the raid and concludes that "the Defense Department could not have done anything differently on the night of the attacks." Moreover, Secretary Clinton was "active and engaged" during the ambush.
At times, it seems the report is more interested in bashing Republicans.
"Republicans drafted their partisan final report in secret with no input whatsoever from nearly half of the Select Committee's members," it reads. "Republicans used taxpayer funds to conduct one of the longest and most partisan congressional investigations in history."
In short, the Democrats' report all but confirms Gowdy's suspicion - they were not interested in helping forward the committee's investigation.
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