(CNN) — Rep. Alan Grayson filed an ethics complaint Wednesday against House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy accusing the No.2 Republican of using taxpayer dollars to make political attacks against Hillary Clinton.
The Florida Democrat, who himself was the target of two ethics complaints this summer, accused McCarthy and Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, of violating “federal law and House rules by using funds appropriated to the Select Committee on Benghazi to oppose the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton,” according to the filing.
“This is a clear and unequivocal misuse of appropriated funds for political purposes,” Grayson writes in the document, which calls on the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate the two GOP officials specifically and not the committee.
The complaint comes a week after McCarthy, the No. 2 Republican, tied the House panel investigating the Benghazi attacks to a dip in Clinton’s poll numbers.
Speaking Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day,” Grayson called McCarthy “execrable” and accused him of “bragging” about using federal funds for political purposes.
The committee has spent $4.6 million in federal funds over the course of its 17-month investigation and is set to release its final report in 2016.
“It’s very simple. You’re not supposed to use taxpayer funds for a political witch hunt,” Grayson said, adding of the Benghazi controversy, “This is the scandal that never was.”
McCarthy, who is vying to become the next House Speaker, made his comments last week on Fox News.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he said. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought.”
McCarthy has since backtracked and sought to clarify his comments, saying that the Benghazi committee “was set up for one sole purpose, to find the truth on behalf of families for four dead Americans.”
A McCarthy spokesman responded to Grayson’s ethics filing by reiterating those comments: “Rep. McCarthy has made it clear that the Select Committee on Benghazi is not political and only focused on getting to the truth.”
Gowdy’s office did not immediately return a CNN request for comment.
While he was not asked about Grayson’s ethics filing, Gowdy on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, rejected the premise that the committee is a political witch hunt and asked the public to “focus on actions and not words” — referring to McCarthy’s initial comments.
But he also defended McCarthy’s costly gaffe.
“What I tell folks back home is I don’t care how many times you put an earpiece in your ear and look into a camera, you still screw up. And Kevin screwed up. I don’t know if it was Hannity pressing him, I don’t know if he got thrown off by asking him to give Speaker Boehner a grade. I can’t unlock the mysteries of that,” McCarthy said.
Grayson, who is fighting a messy Senate primary battle in Florida, is not the only Democrat to seize on McCarthy’s comments.
Clinton launched an ad this week homing in on McCarthy’s comments as an opportunity to beat back against the barrage of GOP attacks she has faced over her handling of the Benghazi attacks and to gird herself against the politically perilous hearing she will face later this month before the committee.
Congressional Democrats also jumped on the remarks, accusing McCarthy of revealing the true nature of the Benghazi committee in his gaffe. And Wednesday morning, Democrats circulated widely a New York Times editorial calling for that committee to be shut down.
Grayson’s accusations comes as he is still beating back two ethics complaints lodged against him this summer accusing the Florida congressman of violating congressional financial disclosure requirements tied to his involvement in two hedge funds that carry his name.
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