Trey Gowdy: Benghazi inquiry would be done sooner with help from Obama, John Kerry

Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, said the committee’s inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack would be done “much sooner” than 2016 if government departments were more responsive to its document requests.

He said President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry could expedite the process.

“If they sen[d] a message to the folks that are reviewing our document request, give these folks what they need to complete their report or give them a legal reason why you’re not going to, but quit playing this game about asking for priorities and ’what do you need first?’ and ’are you sure you really need it?’ ” he said Wednesday on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” “Give ’em what they ask for — this would be done much sooner than 2016 if they’d do it.”

A spokesman for the committee said Wednesday that the panel’s inquiry could stretch into 2016, which Democrats and the presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cited as evidence of the select committee’s political motives.

But Mr. Gowdy said he wants it done sooner and has denied such charges.

“I want it done before 2016 and to that end, we’re doing four witness interviews a week whereas we were doing two,” he said. “That’s ambitious for a staff our size — four. We’re trying to accelerate it, but I’ve got to have the documents.”

Mr. Gowdy said he doesn’t make the assumption that the report would even be critical of Mrs. Clinton because they’re still in the process of gathering facts.

“If the report is not critical of her, then she would probably want it to come out closer to the election, but it’s not going to come out in the middle of 2016,” he said. I hope it doesn’t come out in 2016, period. I hope we’re done before the end of this year. And I say hope because there are certain variables that I cannot control.”

Mr. Gowdy said the timing of the inquiry depends on how fast the Departments of State, Justice and Defense respond to their requests for documents — some of which date as far back as two years.

Mr. Gowdy did say Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attack, is cooperative “from the standpoint that she’s never once evidenced a lack of willingness to come in [and] talk to us.”

On Wednesday, her lawyer did reject a request from Mr. Gowdy that she sit with the committee for a transcribed interview before testifying publicly.

Mr. Gowdy said she would have come in November 2014, but “that was before we had her emails.”

“We have 300 now — we had eight in November of 2014,” he said. “So if I had done what they asked me to do and expedited this, I would have had a conversation with her in the dark. I would not have had her emails.”

Mrs. Clinton explained last month that she used her own email system as secretary of state out of convenience and that she turned over about 30,000 emails she deemed work related to the State Department in December 2014, nearly two years after leaving office.

She said she followed the proper rules and regulations in place at the time and her office said she did not send or receive classified material over the private address.