WASHINGTON — (CNN) Long-time Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is testifying Friday in front of the House panel investigating the Benghazi attacks.
Abedin, the vice chairwoman of Clinton’s presidential campaign and a former top aide at the State Department, went behind closed doors for a transcribed interview — a major difference from what Clinton herself is set to face next week in a public hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Before the hearing started, a committee aide said Abedin will be questioned about the events leading up to, during and after the September 11, 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya — as well as “executive branch activities and efforts to comply with congressional inquiries into them.”
She won’t face questions about her controversial work for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm, or the Clinton Foundation while also serving as a “special government employee” for Clinton at the State Department.
A Clinton campaign spokesman released a statement,
“Huma has been nothing but entirely cooperative with the Committee’s requests, yet it remains unclear why the committee is focused on her, given her lack of knowledge about the events surrounding Benghazi,” Nick Merrill said in a written statement. “The Committee¹s focus on Huma (as opposed to numerous intelligence and defense community officials still outstanding) is additional evidence that the actual attack in Benghazi, and its lessons about how we might better protect diplomats serving in dangerous places, are the last things on the committee’s mind.”
The appearances come after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, credited the committee with dragging down Clinton’s poll numbers in her bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination — a line that fired up Democratic criticism of the panel.
Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Benghazi committee chairman, has insisted the panel’s work isn’t driven by politics.
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