Bradley Podliska, an ex-staffer for the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said in an interview with CNN aired Sunday that he was fired, in part, for refusing pressure to focus his investigation on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
He said that the committee was conducting a “partisan investigation.”
Podliska, an Air Force major, was fired in June after serving as an investigator on the committee for almost nine months, according to CNN.
Podliska said he identifies as a “conservative Republican” who will vote for the Republican nominee, not Clinton in 2016.
“I’m scared. I’m going up against powerful people in Washington,” Podliska said. “I was fired for trying to conduct an objective, nonpartisan, thorough investigation.”
CNN reported that Podliska planned to file a lawsuit against the committee for wrongful termination.
“This has become a partisan investigation. I do not know the reason for the hyper focus on Hillary Clinton,” he said.
Podliska said that he didn’t think the committee intended to target Clinton, but “shifted that way.”
“I’m trying to be objective about this. As I stated, Hillary Clinton has a lot of explaining to do. We, however, did not need to shift resources to hyper focus on Hillary Clinton,” Podliska continued. “We didn’t need to deemphasis and in some cases drop the investigations on different agencies, different organizations, and different individuals.”
The House committee denied Podliska’s allegations in a letter to the New York Times. The committee’s chairman, Trey Gowdy (R-SC) denied an interview Sunday with CNN.
