Benghazi chairman defends move to deny funds to State Dept.

The chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), is endorsing a move to deny some funding to the State Department in order to force the administration to cooperate with the panel’s ongoing investigation.

{mosads}In a statement Tuesday, Gowdy said the panel’s “overarching preference remains for the State Department to produce all relevant documents needed to complete the task assigned to us by the House.”

He said the 12-member panel has “tried talking to the State Department, writing letters, sending subpoenas, having compliance hearings and signaling that this step would also be considered if relevant documents were not produced.”

Gowdy said the State Department “must improve its public records compliance, that is why this next step is being contemplated.”

The House Appropriations Committee’s State and Foreign Operations bill fiscal 2016 unveiled earlier Tuesday “withholds 15 percent of State Department’s operational funds until requirements related to proper management of Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] and electronic communications are met,” Republicans said in a statement.

It was Gowdy himself who first floated the idea of using State Department funding as leverage. In an interim report last month, he mentioned that the House should “consider motivating the executive branch through the appropriations process.”

On Tuesday, Gowdy called the select committee’s request for documents “reasonable, legitimate, relevant and essential to being able to answer questions related to the before, during and after in Benghazi” and said that it should have emails from State Department’s “principals” who served former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“The explanations and excuses for non-compliance are tired and unpersuasive,” according to Gowdy. “Regrettably it sometimes takes money to get agencies’ attention.”

The House GOP spending bill contains $47.8 billion in both discretionary funding and funding through the Pentagon’s war fund. The total is $1.4 billion less than the current enacted level and $6.1 billion below President Obama’s request.

The State Department would receive $15.8 billion, which the Appropriations panel said includes the full requested amount for embassy security at more than 275 diplomatic facilities overseas. The money for embassy security would not be subject to the potential 15 percent cut.

The White House responded angrily to the move.

“Hearing it for the first time, I am struck by the irony that House Republicans, who profess to be significantly concerned about security at U.S. embassies around the world are threatening to withhold funding for security at our embassies around the world,” press secretary Josh Earnest said.

“That is consistent with an approach that puts politics ahead of the lives of our diplomats and that is certainly not an approach that would garner the approval of the president of the United States,” he added.

— This story was updated at 5:16 p.m.