Warren: Benghazi Committee Chair ‘Gives Oversight A Bad Name’

FILE - In this June 2, 2012 file photo, Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren speaks in Springfield, Mass. Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has spent weeks fanning questions about Democratic rival ... FILE - In this June 2, 2012 file photo, Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren speaks in Springfield, Mass. Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has spent weeks fanning questions about Democratic rival Elizabeth Warren's claim of Native American heritage on the campaign trail, while Warren regularly paints Brown as a darling of Wall Street. The rhetoric is sometimes caustic, and all but invisible in the ad war being waged on Massachusetts television sets. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File) MORE LESS
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wasted no time in going after House Republicans’ new select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks in 2012. Specifically, Warren set her crosshairs on the committee’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC).

Warren, in an email to supporters on Friday, said that Gowdy “gives oversight a bad name.” She cited a Huffington Post article that included Gowdy grilling her on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011. That article, Warren pointed out, reported that Gowdy “seemed to lack the basic facts” about the new watchdog agency.

Warren also said that the whole Benghazi special committee is just “political theater of the House Republicans” and a “waste-of-time-and-resources witch hunt and fundraising sideshow” that’s really a distraction.

“This stunt does a disservice to those who serve our country abroad, and it distracts us from issues we should be taking up on behalf of the American people,” Warren continued.

Warren concluded the email that the entire effort is “wrong and it’s shameful.”

Democrats are deciding whether to completely boycott the committee. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), earlier in the week, complained to House Speaker Boehner (R-OH) that his refusal to put an even number of Democrats and Republicans on the panel into a thinly veiled “partisan review.”

“Another partisan review that serves only to politicize these attacks is disrespectful and unworthy of the American people,” the two House Democrats wrote.

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