Hillary Clinton Concludes It’s ‘Time to Move On’ Following Release of Benghazi Committee Final Report
House Republicans on the Benghazi Committee released their final report today.
— -- Following the release of the House Republicans on the Benghazi Select Committee’s final report, Hillary Clinton brushed off the document, saying it was nothing new and that it was “time to move on.”
“I'll leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it's pretty clear it's time to move on,” Clinton told reporters while campaigning in Denver, Colorado.
“I said this when I testified for 11 hours that no one has thought more about or lost more sleep over the lives that we lost, the four Americans, which was devastating,” Clinton said. “We owe it to those brave Americans to make sure we learn the right lessons from this tragedy.”
Clinton also seemed to suggest that the Benghazi committee spent millions of taxpayers' money for nothing and that the report “took on partisan tinge.”
The report says U.S. State Department officials, including presumptive Democratic nominee Clinton, should’ve been on alert because there was intelligence leading up to the attacks suggesting the diplomatic consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi were not safe. The 2012 Libya terror attacks killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
In a statement earlier today, the Clinton campaign slammed the Benghazi Select Committee for releasing parts of the report overnight and argued committee Republicans are “finishing their work in the same, partisan way that we've seen from them since the beginning.”
“In leaking out select portions from their report in the middle of the night, without even allowing some of the committee's own members to see it, the Republican members are clearly seeking to avoid any fact-checking of their discredited, conspiracy theories,” Brian Fallon, spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said in the statement.
"After more than two years and more than $7 million in taxpayer funds, the Committee report has not found anything to contradict the conclusions of the multiple, earlier investigations,” the statement from the Clinton campaign read.
The statement went on to say that the report is an attempted takedown of Clinton ahead of the general election, pointing to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s comments on Fox News and a former staffer’s claims that he was fired from the Benghazi committee for refusing to focus solely on Clinton.
“This Committee's chief goal is to politicize the deaths of four brave Americans in order to try to attack the Obama administration and hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign,” the statement read.
During a press conference today on Capitol Hill, Chairman of the Benghazi Select Committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, fought back accusations that the report was partisan, arguing that the Republicans’ report mentions Clinton far less than the Democrats' report released yesterday. The Republicans’ report came to no new conclusions from previous investigations about Clinton’s wrongdoing in the Benghazi attack.
“My audience are fair-minded Americans who want to know what happened to their fellow citizens and they can draw their own conclusion,” Rep. Gowdy said today in a press conference on Capitol Hill, adding, “If you can read this report and you believe on the last page of the report that it is about one person instead of about four people, then there is nothing I can say that is going to diffuse you of that.”
The RNC released a statement following the press conference, saying, “Hillary Clinton was in charge, knew the risks and did nothing. Together the report’s findings make clear we cannot afford to let Hillary Clinton be our next commander-in-chief.”
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump hit Clinton on Twitter today, saying Benghazi was "just another Hillary Clinton failure."
Less than a week ago, Trump also tweeted that Clinton lies to Benghazi families.
Trump has also praised Chairman Gowdy as a “seasoned prosecutor” when Gowdy was first appointed to lead the committee, but then later criticized Gowdy in 2015 on Twitter after he endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio for president.
ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Justin Fishel and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.