Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is running a new ad that seizes on House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s admission that the Benghazi committee can take credit for her diminished public standing.
The 30—second ad, which started airing on Tuesday on cable television, shows Ms. Clinton on the offensive over Mr. McCarthy’s comments ahead of her Oct. 22 testimony before the GOP—led House committee.
“The Republicans finally admit it,” says an announcer. “The Republicans have spent millions attacking Hillary because she’s fighting for everything they oppose.”
The ad came hours after Ms. Clinton lashed out at the special House committee investigating the 2012 deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. She was secretary of state at the time.
Mr. McCarthy, a Republican considered likely to become House speaker following John Boehner’s surprise resignation, said last week, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”
Mr. McCarthy called Ms. Clinton “untrustable” and said, “no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen.”
Mr. McCarthy later retracted the comment and said he regrets it.
The ad includes Mr. McCarthy’s comments.
Emily Schillinger, a spokeswoman for Boehner, said in response to the ad- “This is a classic Clinton attempt to distract from her record of putting classified information at risk and jeopardising our national security, all of which the FBI is investigating.”
Ms. Clinton said the committee was a partisan political exercise designed to “exploit” the deaths of the four Americans, but stopped short of calling for it to be disbanded, as some Democrats have urged.
Committee Democrats released a partial transcript of a closed-door interview with Ms. Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, in response to what they called selective and inaccurate Republican leaks.
Release of the transcript is “the only way to adequately correct the public record,” the Democrats wrote the chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican.
They said they would release the full transcript in five days, in order to give Mr. Gowdy time to identify any specific information in the transcript he believes should be withheld from the public.
