The GOP chairman of the House Benghazi committee said Sunday that he wishes his fellow Republicans would "shut up" about the investigation into the 2012 attacks on the diplomatic compounds in Libya because most of them do not know the details of their work.
Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina said on CBS' "Face The Nation" on Sunday that he has told his Republican colleagues to "shut up talking about things that you don't know anything about. And unless you're on the committee, you have no idea what we have done, why we have done it and what new facts we have found," reported CNN.
Gowdy dismissed recent statements from three Republican lawmakers - Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Rep. Richard Hanna of New York and Bradley Podliska, a former Republican staffer on the committee - implying that the panel was at least partially designed to harm the presidential campaign of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time the Benghazi attacks occurred.
McCarthy suggested in a recent Fox News interview that the committee was formed to hurt Clinton's poll numbers, and Hanna also said "a big part" of the Benghazi panel was designed to go after Clinton, reported USA Today.
Gowdy referred to McCarthy, Hanna and Podliska as "three people who don't have any idea what they're talking about."
Clinton is scheduled to testify before the committee on Thursday about the attack, which left four Americans dead.
Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, said he wants to find out more about what role Clinton played in deciding whether to decrease security at the embassy shortly before the attack.
He pointed out that Clinton is only one of 70 witnesses that the committee has called on so far, and added that testimony from eye witnesses who were on the ground the night of the attack is more important than Clinton's testimony, according to The Washington Post.
"I get that she gets more attention than the other 69," he said. "But frankly, if you ask me, the eye witnesses on the ground that night in Benghazi are more important to me as a former prosecutor than the former secretary of state."
Gowdy also said he was more interested in the emails of Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who had asked for additional security help and was killed in the attacks, than in Clinton's emails.
"She's a witness. She was the secretary of state. You have to talk to her," Gowdy said of Clinton. "We've already talked to 50 people not named Clinton. We're going to talk to another couple of dozen not named Clinton."
