Cummings: Gowdy Has Turned Benghazi Committee into a ‘Political Football’

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the ranking Democratic member of House Benghazi Select Committee Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said his counterpart, chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, has turned the Benghazi Select Committee into a “political football” against the wishes of the family members of the murdered Americans.

Cummings said, “It’s interesting that after 17 months, $7 million and counting of taxpayer money that Chairman Gowdy has another two dozen witnesses to interview. Very interesting. And I do believe, what he is trying to do, I listened very carefully, he’s now trying to shift back to where we should have been all along, that is looking at the Benghazi incident and it’s clear to me, he can try to dismiss the words of Congressman McCarthy, second highest ranking member in congress. he can try to dismiss the words of Congressman Hanna and of his hand-picked investigator who quit, but the fact is that he keeps saying, don’t listen to what they say. We were on the committee, too. he said there were seven members. also five Democrats that were on  — we know what has been going on. He has not yet interviewed the head of the CIA. He has not yet interviewed the head of Joint Chiefs, the head of secretary of defense, none of that.”

He continued, “I think it’s a sad day for all of us because we made a commitment to the families. the families came in with tears in their eyes literally said, please do not make this a political football, that’s exactly what’s happened. They said find out more information about what did happen and then they asked us to do one other thing, that is try to make sure you figure out how this does not happen again. I think we failed at all three.”

“I’m calling on Mr. Gowdy to make sure that he releases all the transcripts of all these people that he claims that we have interviewed because I got to tell you most of them are State Department people, or they were Hillary Clinton’s former aides. People that worked in her campaign, speech writers. talk about this 50 witnesses we still have been zeroed in on Hillary Clinton. There is absolutely no doubt, very unfortunate,” he added.

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