Documents show State Department missed target date for special Benghazi unit
(FOX)- The State Department missed its own target date last year for the establishment of a special unit to review Benghazi documents, documents obtained by Fox News show.
The previously unpublished documents, generated by the House select committee that is investigating the 2012 terror attacks, detail how Rep. Trey Gowdy, the panel’s Republican chairman from South Carolina, began working behind the scenes early last year to help the department secure over $4 million in “reprogrammed” funds set aside by Congress for such a unit.
According to agreements worked out between Republican staff on the committee and top aides to Secretary of State John Kerry, including chief of staff Jonathan Finer, the document review unit was supposed to be “operational” in June 2015.
Yet the State Department, prompted by inquiries from Fox News, now acknowledges it missed that target date. “The Congressional Document Production unit began staffing up in mid-2015,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner in an email late Thursday, “and is now fully operational.”
The records obtained by Fox News also show repeated refusals by Kerry’s aides, including Finer, to account for what happened to the appropriated funds when Gowdy’s staff made repeated inquiries about the matter back in mid-2015.
Gowdy told Fox News he sought the additional funding “so they could speed up document production to Congress and we could finish the investigation faster.”
Top administration officials, including white House spokesman Josh Earnest, have accused the committee of prolonging the investigation for “political” reasons – specifically, to try to damage Clinton’s presidential candidacy.
In his email to Fox News, Toner acknowledged that Gowdy and his staff had indeed “supported” the request for additional funding.