The State Department is continuing to stonewall the House Select Committee on Benghazi in its quest to wrap up an investigation of the 2012 terror attack which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy said Monday.
"For nearly a year and a half, the State Department has withheld documents and information about Benghazi and Libya from the American people’s elected representatives in Congress,"
Gowdy said in a statement.
"Whatever the administration is hiding, its justifications for doing so are imaginary and appear to be invented for the sake of convenience. That's not how complying with a congressional subpoena works, and its [sic] well past time the department stops stonewalling."
Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, noted a May 13th report in The Wall Street Journal which cited four occasions in which the State Department withheld documents from investigators because of "institutional interests" and "confidentiality."
He said he protested to Secretary of State John Kerry that the withholding of information was based on "dubious legal 'theories' not recognized by the Constitution," and gave the State Department until May 18 to provide a legal basis for it. The State Department has yet to comply.
Democrats believe the committee is timing the release of its report in an effort to smear presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time.