A very odd encounter took place during Tuesday’s deposition of Hillary Clinton’s adviser Sid Blumenthal at the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Former House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA) entered the closed-door hearing uninvited, only to be swiftly escorted from the room by Benghazi committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC).
“The pair briefly exchanged hushed words in a nearby hallway before Issa stormed off, throwing an empty soda can into a nearby trash bin,” The Hill reports.
Gowdy returned to the hearing, apologized for the interruption, and deferred questions about the encounter to Rep. Issa.
“Issa conducted his own lengthy investigation into the deadly 2012 siege in Benghazi, Libya, when he was chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. At one point, he called the former secretary of State to testify,” The Hill recalls, noting that Issa made another attempt earlier in the day to visit the Blumenthal interview, only to discover it had adjourned for lunch.
Neither Issa nor Gowdy appears to be offering any further details on the argument, or Issa’s purpose in visiting the hearings. As Breitbart News reported this morning, Blumenthal turned over some correspondence related to Benghazi that was somehow never tendered by either former Secretary of State Clinton or the State Department, leading to considerable anger from congressional investigators.
If Rep. Issa was swinging by the Blumenthal hearings to express his anger about the concealment of these documents, he didn’t have to worry, because Rep. Gowdy was mad enough for both of them.
“I think it’s noteworthy that no committee of Congress that has previously looked into Benghazi or Libya uncovered these memos, and I will leave it to you to figure out whether there was a failure to produce on the former secretary’s part or a failure to produce on the Department of State’s behalf. Clearly the committee should have gotten this information sooner,” Gowdy told reporters before entering the hearing.