Benghazi Committee’s Final Report Clears Hillary Clinton of Any Wrongdoing

The House Select Committee on Benghazi released its final report Tuesday finding no new evidence then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was responsible or culpable in any way for the four Americans who were killed during an attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya in 2011.

In the lengthy 800-page report, the committee, led by Representative Trey Gowdy (R – S.C.), concluded one of the longstanding criticisms of the Benghazi attack of a “stand down” order was never given and made clear that additional support could not have reached the embassy to prevent the deaths of the four men.

The report of a “stand down” order had previously been debunked in earlier investigations, but it seems the House Select Committee finally put that conspiratorial question to bed.

From the New York Times:

“The report, however, did not dispute that United States military forces stationed in Europe could not have reached Benghazi in time to rescue the personnel who died — a central finding of previous inquiries.

“Still, it issued stinging criticism of the overall delay in response and the lack of preparedness on the part of the government.

“’The assets ultimately deployed by the Defense Department in response to the Benghazi attacks were not positioned to arrive before the final lethal attack,” the committee wrote. “The fact that this is true does not mitigate the question of why the world’s most powerful military was not positioned to respond.’”

Clinton has been singled-out in the investigation as responding too slow to reports of an attack, but the report’s findings show that was not the case and that the then-Secretary had ordered “assets” to Benghazi, but that by “time of the final lethal attack, no asset ordered by the Secretary had even left the ground.”

The Republican-led committee still questioned the Obama administration’s response to the attacks, claiming the administration refused to call the attack a “terrorist attack” due to the upcoming 2012 election.

“Officials at the State Department, including Secretary Clinton, learned almost in real time that the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist attack,” Mr. Jordan and Mr. Pompeo wrote, according to the NYT. “With the presidential election just 56 days away, rather than tell the American people the truth and increase the risk of losing an election, the administration told one story privately and a different story publicly.”

The claim that the administration did not call the Benghazi attack “terrorism” has widely been debunked, as reports show the president gave a news briefing in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, one day after the attack, and said, “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.”

U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, State Department information officer Sean Smith, and C.I.A. contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty were the four Americans killed on Sept. 11, 2011, when insurgents stormed the embassy in Benghazi.

The investigation into the attacks has spanned two years, multiple investigations, and an estimated $7 million in taxpayer money and has been viewed as a highly partisan attempt to tarnish Clinton’s record leading up to the 2016 election.

For more, head over to the New York Times. Read the full House Select Committee report here.