Benghazi panel Dems playing ‘hide the ball,’ GOP member says

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, says the investigation into the 2012 terrorist attack is taking so long because of obstruction at every turn by Democrats.

“What’s taken us so long is the Democrats on the committee and this administration have played ‘hide the ball’ and have denied us records that the American people deserve and that our committee needs to complete our investigation,” Pompeo said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We would have been happy to move more quickly, but we’ve met with obstruction all along the way.”

{mosads}The investigation into the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, has lasted more than 17 months.

The Kansas lawmaker said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will get a fair hearing when she testifies before the committee on Thursday.

“We will ask her the same kind of fact-centric questions that we’ve asked the other witnesses,” he said. “We have an obligation to hold folks accountable and make sure we reduce the risk that something like this could ever possibly happen again.”

He said Clinton has not made the investigation any easier by hiding and destroying the emails on her private email server.

“Secretary Clinton tried to hide every one of her emails, she destroyed 30,000 of them, and now we have an FBI investigation of those very emails.”

Clinton senior aide Huma Abedin testified for six hours before the panel on Friday.

Critics of the panel say it has become a partisan effort to damage Clinton’s presidential campaign.