House Speaker John Boehner has vowed to go ahead with a special panel to probe the Benghazi attacks even though a new Republican-led report claims there was no attempt at a cover-up by the White House.
Boehner said a select committee headed by Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina will still investigate the terror attacks in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans,
according to The Wall Street Journal.
"The American people still have far too many questions about what happened that night and why," Boehner said in a statement. "I look forward to the definitive report Chairman Gowdy and the select committee will present to the American people."
Boehner's announcement came just days after the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers,
issued a report declaring that there had been no intention to mislead the public by the Obama administration about the siege on the U.S. diplomatic compound.
The bipartisan report, which capped a two-year investigation, concluded that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the attack and absolved the administration of any wrongdoing, saying there was no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, and no missed opportunity for a military rescue.
But former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the committee had been "co-opted by the CIA" and called the report released on Friday "misleading."
The report said it was the "definitive House statement" on the controversy and that it was being unveiled "so that the American public can separate the actual facts from the swirl of rumors and unsupported allegations," the Journal reported.
Democrats have blasted Boehner's special investigative panel as a political ploy aimed at embarrassing Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 presidential election. She was President Barack Obama's secretary of state at the time of the Benghazi attacks.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the panel, said the new report proved that Boehner's latest Benghazi probe was pointless, and the findings would be the same as other investigations into the attacks.
"Based on these unanimous, bipartisan findings, there is no reason for the Benghazi Select Committee to reinvestigate these facts, repeat the work already done by our Republican and Democratic colleagues, and squander millions of additional taxpayer dollars in the process," Cummings said.
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