WASHINGTON – When Hillary Clinton testifies about the Benghazi attacks, she’ll appear before the new select committee investigating the deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, a leading House Republican says.
“It is what the select committee is supposed to be doing,” Illinois Republican Rep. Peter Roskam, House deputy whip and a member of the special Benghazi panel, said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend. “My understanding is that that’s largely been reconciled.”
The House earlier this month voted to form a special committee to investigate the 2012 attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and the White House’s immediate response, which Republicans call a coverup.
Who will testify where has become a question for the new panel, announced by House leaders hours after House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry to appear before his committee. Neither Issa, nor any other House chairman investigating the Benghazi attacks, was named to the new Benghazi panel.
Kerry agreed to testify before Issa’s committee in June. The State Department said the secretary’s testimony there would obviate the need for him to appear before the Benghazi panel.
Asked if Kerry wasn’t going to testify before Issa’s panel, Roskam replied, “The Benghazi Select Committee is going to be dealing exclusively with these jurisdictional questions in the House.”
This was “more of a procedural snafu than anything else,” the Illinois Republican said.
Asked if Issa has backed off, Roskam shrugged. A spokeswoman for Issa didn’t immediately respond when asked whether Kerry would still testify before the oversight panel.
Some Democrats say the special Benghazi committee is a political exercise aimed in part at weakening Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attacks and is a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2016. Roskam disputed that, saying the inquiry will be a “fact-based exercise.”
Asked if the panel will want to talk to her, Roskam said, “I think by all means. I think anybody who is material.”
Roskam said he hoped a subpoena wouldn’t be needed to compel Clinton’s testimony on the attacks.
Roskam, who monitored Ukraine’s presidential elections as an international observer, said many voters supported president- elect Petro Poroshenko for stability.
“The Ukrainian voters that I spoke to, some of them were making a strategic decision,” Roskam said. “They made the decision to vote for the frontrunner, Poroshenko, in order to get a president and get a president quickly,” rather than wait weeks for a runoff election.
Roskam, who was part of a U.S. delegation that met with Poroshenko before the election for about 45 minutes, said he was impressed with the president-elect.
Poroshenko told the Americans that Ukraine will face a diminished economy and has problems with corruption in government and transparency, Roskam said. Poroshenko wants to “essentially embed Western observers and auditors throughout the government in order to move forward on that,” he said.
Ukraine also won’t negotiate on the legitimacy of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Roskam said.
“He also said that they were not willing to compromise on their economic tilt to the West,” Roskam said. “He was declarative about that.”
