Washington (CNN) House Republicans capped a partisan, two-year investigation of the Benghazi terror attacks Tuesday with a report that faults the Obama administration for security lapses that led to the deaths of four Americans but contains no revelations likely to further damage Hillary Clinton. 
 
 The more than 800-page report paints a picture of a perfect storm of bureaucratic inertia, rapidly worsening security in Libya and inadequate resources in the months that led up to the killings of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three colleagues on September 11, 2012. 
 
 The administration initially claimed the attack was carried out by an angry mob responding to a video made in the U.S. mocking Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. But the assault was later determined to be a terrorist attack -- a finding Republicans accused the White House of covering up to protect President Barack Obama's re-election prospects. 
 
 The House Benghazi Committee report doesn't directly blame Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time and is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, for the attacks. But it does suggest she and other administration officials did not adequately address the risks involved. It also suggests Stevens himself bore responsibility for securing his post. 
 
 When it comes to Clinton, the report stresses that intelligence was available suggesting an attack was possible and she and a top aide, Patrick Kennedy, should have realized the risks posed to the Benghazi mission by extremist groups. 
 
 "It is not clear what additional intelligence would have satisfied either Kennedy or the Secretary in understanding the Benghazi mission compound was at risk -- short of an attack," the report says. 
 
 Clinton told the House Benghazi Committee last year that she was aware of the dangers in Libya but "there was no actionable intelligence" indicating a planned attack. 
 
 On Tuesday, she reacted to the report by saying that after two years, the committee had found "nothing, nothing" to contradict an independent Accountability Review Board she commissioned herself while Secretary of State. 
 
 "I'll leave it to others to characterize the report but I think it's pretty clear it's time to move on," Clinton said at a campaign event in Denver. 
 
 Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump tweeted his reaction later Tuesday, saying: "Benghazi is just another Hillary Clinton failure. It just never seems to work the way it's supposed to with Clinton. Hillary Clinton's Presidency would be catastrophic for the future of our country. She is ill-fit with bad judgment." 
 
 Benghazi is just another Hillary Clinton failure. It just 
 
 never seems to work the way it's supposed to with Clinton. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2016 
 
 Hillary Clinton's Presidency would be catastrophic for 
 
 the future of our country. She is ill-fit with bad judgment. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2016 
 
 The report reveals that Stevens and senior department officials were apparently keen to set up a permanent consulate in Benghazi ahead of a planned visit to the city by Clinton in October 2012. But the difficulty finding a suitable secure facility prompted officials to exclude the Benghazi compound from official department rules and standards that would have otherwise been more stringent. 
 
 "If you are in a non-diplomatic facility, there are no security standards. They don't exist," one unnamed diplomatic security agent told the committee. 
 
 Conservative members of the panel released a more political analysis of the attack Tuesday that's far more critical of Clinton and the Obama administration. That study, authored by GOP Reps. Mike Pompeo of Kansas and Jim Jordan of Ohio, blames the attack on a "tragic failure of leadership." 
 
 Their decision to release an addendum to the main report appears to suggest that Pompeo and Jordan believe the committee report does not go far enough in criticizing Clinton and the administration. 
 
 "The overall report, it's about the facts, what happened," Jordan told Chris Cuomo Tuesday on CNN's "New Day." "But Mr. Pompeo and I thought it was important to ask the questions. Why were we still in Benghazi when almost every other country had left? Why did we stay in Benghazi when the security situation was so terrible, so dangerous? And why did the administration mislead us?" 
 
 JUST WATCHED How the Benghazi committee got so political Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH How the Benghazi committee got so political 02:49 
 
 Democratic reaction 
 
 Democrats pre-emptively rebutted the findings Monday by releasing their own dissenting report. They accused Gowdy and the committee of flagrant political bias while arguing the investigation wasted taxpayer money to try to damage Clinton ahead of the November election. 
 
 State Department spokesman Mark Toner said "the official facts surrounding the 2012 attacks in Benghazi have been known for some time." 
 
 He cited "great progress towards making our posts safer since 2012" and said "our priority continues to be carrying out our national security mission while mitigating the risks to our employees." 
 
 Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel's top Democrat, blasted partisanship on the committee. 
 
 "Democrats offered to work with Chairman Gowdy on a joint report, and we even offered to give him a draft of our report ahead of time," Cummings said. "Instead, he mocked our idea and decided to go it alone right before the presidential conventions. We can't comment on his partisan report because we haven't read it, and we haven't read it because Republicans didn't want us to check it against the evidence we obtained."‎ 
 
 White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the report was evidence of the GOP's intent on damaging Clinton. 
 
 "There seems to be only one remaining question," Earnest said. "It's simply this. Is the RNC going to disclose the in-kind contribution they received from House Republicans today?" 
 
 South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, the committee chairman, defended his committee's work, insisting the panel uncovered valuable new evidence that should change how the events in Benghazi are viewed. 
 
 "The seven of us believed that there were more questions to ask, that there were more answers to acquire, more witnesses to interview, more documents to access," Gowdy said. "And this report validates that belief." 
 
 Adding texture to the public record 
 
 Tuesday's report includes testimony from senior State Department and intelligence officials along with lower-ranking diplomats and diplomatic security agents. It adds color and texture to the public record of the attacks already unveiled by multiple congressional and independent investigations. 
 
 It shows that the State Department assessment of the situation in Benghazi in 2011 and 2012 noted rising crime levels, rampant firearm ownership, and a high risk of militia violence in the security vacuum left by the toppling of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. The precarious security situation, according to the report, was exacerbated by inadequate security at the Benghazi outpost, which was plagued by equipment failures, a lack of manpower and relied on an often-disorganized local militia for protection. 
 
 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is ceremonially sworn in as secretary of state by Vice President Joe Biden, as her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter Chelsea look on at the State Department in Washington on February 2, 2009. Hide Caption 1 of 9 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Israeli President Shimon Peres meets with Clinton at the president's residence in Jerusalem on March 3, 2009. Hide Caption 2 of 9 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011. Hide Caption 3 of 9 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Clinton reviews an honor guard carrying torches at Bellevue Castle on November 9, 2009, in Berlin. Hide Caption 4 of 9 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Clinton joins some of Kenya's Masaai traditional dancers before a dinner hosted in her honor on August 5, 2009. Hide Caption 5 of 9 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Clinton testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the September 11 attacks against the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on January 23, 2013. Hide Caption 6 of 9 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Clinton tours the Shwedagon Pagoda, a Buddhist temple founded between the 6th and 10th centuries, in Myanmar on December 1, 2011. Hide Caption 7 of 9 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy meets with Clinton in New York on September 24, 2012. Hide Caption 8 of 9 Photos: Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State Sen. John Kerry talks with committee staffer Bertie Bowman as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attends Kerry's Senate confirmation hearing after Kerry was nominated to succeed her as secretary of state. Hide Caption 9 of 9 
 
 The report says requests for more security in Benghazi repeatedly met no response or were refused by senior officials in Washington, though the parts of the report seen by CNN do not directly lay the fault at Clinton's door. 
 
 The full details surrounding the attack may never be fully understood, the report says. The panel blames Clinton and the State Department for failing to turn over all emails from her private server -- an omission it describes as "shameful." 
 
 But Mark Toner, the State Department spokesman, said officials went out of their way to cooperate. 
 
 'When combined with the seven previous Congressional inquiries, the Department has participated at least in 15 hearings, 64 briefings, 72 interviews, and has provided 100,000 pages of documents," Toner said, adding that the panel requested huge volumes of information over a long period of years that was not relevant to the Benghazi tragedy. 
 
 Other findings include : 
 
 The tenacity of Chris Stevens. 
 
 The report reveals the determination of Stevens to keep the post open in Benghazi — "Chris had, I think a different tolerance of risk than I did," said Joan Polaschik, former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya. 
 
 -- After the fall of the Gadhaffi regime in 2011, one of Clinton's top State Department aides, Jake Sullivan, asked a colleague what it would take to get a team back to the Libyan capital of Tripoli to re-open the U.S. embassy. 
 
 -- "An ambassador to Libya who actually wants to go. Locking Pat Kennedy (then Under Secretary for Management) in a closet for long enough to actually take some real risks," the colleage emailed back. 
 
 -- In testimony to the committee, Charlene Lamb, formerly a senior State Department official, said that Stevens was ultimately responsible for security at his post. "It is very unfortunate and sad at this point that Ambassador Stevens was a victim, but that is where ultimate responsibility lies." 
 
 Inadequate security in Benghazi 
 
 Throughout late 2011 and through 2012, security became perilous in Benghazi and there were at least two attacks on the compound and on diplomats and other international facilities. 
 
 -- A diplomatic security agent in the city in November 2011 told the committee that security was "woefully inadequate" with no perimeter security, low walls and no lighting. 
 
 -- The report said the Benghazi mission made repeated requests for new agents in late 2011 and early 2012. After a series of attacks on international targets in the city, more requests were made. But "no additional resources were provided by Washington D.C. to fortify the compound after the first two attacks. No additional personnel were sent to secure the facility, despite repeated requests for security experts on the ground." 
 
 -- At one point, then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland emailed Stevens to ask how to publicly describe the security incidents in 2012 : "Washington D.C. dismissed Stevens' multiple requests for additional security personnel while also asking for help in messaging the very violence he was seeking security from," the report said. 
 
 -- The report, citing a cable from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, suggests there simply were not sufficient resources in the unstable nation to send to properly protect Benghazi. In early August 2012, there were only 34 security staff at the embassy. By the end of the month there were only six. 
 
 -- Such shortages might explain the overreliance on the February 17 local militia in Benghazi to help secure the outpost -- but a diplomatic security agent quoted in the report said the group was "undisciplined and unskilled." 
 
 -- In 2011 and early 2012, security sometimes became so difficult in Benghazi that staff were unable to do their jobs reaching out Libyans to report back to Washington on the restive political situation in the city. But the report says that in February 2012, the lead diplomatic security agent at the Tripoli Embassy told the post that "substantive reporting" was not its job anyway. 
 
 "[U]nfortunately, nobody has advised the (principal diplomatic officer) that Benghazi is there to support [redacted] operations, not conduct substantive reporting," the agent wrote, in a possible sign that the primary purpose of the mission was in fact to support the CIA. 
 
 -- The report also finds that the military did not carry out then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's order to deploy U.S. forces to help rescue Americans under fire in Benghazi. 
 
 "What was disturbing from the evidence the Committee found was that at the time of the final lethal attack at the Annex, no asset ordered deployed by the Secretary had even left the ground," the report says. 
 
 -- The panel also argues that initial administration talking points framing the attack as the result of an angry protest over an anti-Muslim video released in the U.S. were drawn up by administration officials and did not include accounts from eyewitnesses or the Americans under attack. 
 
 The report quotes an agent at the Benghazi compound as hearing chanting before a full-on attack begins, including explosions and gunfire and "70 people rushing into the compound with an assortment of "AK-47s, grenades, RPG's ... a couple of different assault rifles." 
 
 Another security officer described the assault as "a full on attack against our compound." 
 
 Asked if he had seen a protest before the attacks, the officer said: "zip, nothing, nada." ||||| Washington (CNN) Two top Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee blasted Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration Tuesday for "a tragic failure of leadership" in the run-up to the deaths of four Americans in the U.S. outpost in Libya in 2012. 
 
 Reps. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, accuse the administration of covering up the true nature of the attack on Benghazi to avoid damaging President Barack Obama's re-election race. The hardline conservatives, who were among Clinton's toughest questioners during her testimony before the committee last year, released their own account of the attacks to complement the panel's overall report 
 
 "What we did find was a tragic failure of leadership -- in the run up to the attack and the night of -- and an administration that, so blinded by politics and its desire to win an election, disregarded a basic duty of government: Tell the people the truth," the congressmen wrote. "And for those reasons Benghazi is and always will be, an American tragedy." 
 
 Their decision to release an addendum to the main report appears to suggest that Pompeo and Jordan believe the committee report does not go far enough in criticizing Clinton and the administration. 
 
 "The overall report, it's about the facts, what happened," Jordan told Chris Cuomo Tuesday on CNN's "New Day." "But Mr. Pompeo and I thought it was important to ask the questions. Why were we still in Benghazi when almost every other country had left? Why did we stay in Benghazi when the security situation was so terrible, so dangerous? And why did the administration mislead us?" 
 
 The congressmen write that the administration did not do all it could to save Americans under attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. They also say the administration failed to bring all the perpetrators to justice and accuse Democrats of blocking the GOP-led probe. 
 
 The conservatives specifically accuse Clinton of doing nothing to improve security in Benghazi, a lapse that they blame for the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three compatriots during the attacks on a U.S. outpost and a CIA annex. 
 
 The analysis includes some explicit criticism of Clinton that is likely to be fuel presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's charges that she is responsible for the deaths in the attack, which was first thought to be a protest but then proven to be a terrorist assault. 
 
 Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon blasted the committee in an overnight tweet. 
 
 "Far from honoring the four brave Americans who died, the Benghazi Committee has been a partisan sham since its start," he wrote. 
 
 The analysis from Pompeo and Jordan details a memo from then-Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones, which painted a picture of worsening security conditions across eastern Libya. 
 
 Clinton argued during her 11-hour grilling before the committee last October that no recommendations were made to her from State Department experts or the intelligence community that U.S. facilities in Benghazi or Tripoli should be abandoned on the basis of the assessments. 
 
 But the Pompeo/Jordan report argues that by August 17, 2012, "it had become a situation that now demanded leadership by the Secretary of State herself -- leadership that did not sit back and wait for a recommendation." 
 
 It was now time for Clinton to show "leadership to upgrade the facility or get our people out ... " 
 
 "She had the last, clear chance to order an immediate closure of the Benghazi facility yet did nothing and four Americans died." 
 
 The document examines the issue of whether U.S. forces in Europe or the United States were ever deployed in a bid to aid Americans in Benghazi. 
 
 The report related how former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified that he had ordered three assets to deploy, a Marine anti-terrorism support team, a unit known as a Commanders in Extremis force and a U.S.-based hostage rescue team. 
 
 The congressmen say that Americans had been told by the administration that the military could never have reached Benghazi in time to help the beleaguered Americans with jets, drones or personnel. But the analysis says fighter planes and armed drones never left the ground and planes carrying the rescue teams did not take off until hours after the attack was over. 
 
 "We are now convinced, contrary to the administration's public claim that the military did not have time to get to Benghazi, that the administration never launched men or machines to help directly in the fight." 
 
 "That is very different from what we have been told to date," the analysis continues. 
 
 The congressmen also rebuke the military, saying the Pentagon failed to provide the committee with lists of planes that could have reached Benghazi or an inventory of armed drone assets. 
 
 Democrats point to previous investigations conducted by the House Armed Services Committee, the Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence panel that concluded that when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi came under attack the military commanders did what they could under the time and distance constraints to respond. Those investigations did not find any evidence that there was a so-called "stand down" order given by someone in the government or military that prevented any U.S. forces from getting to the site to help save anyone under attack as some conservatives have claimed. 
 
 Republicans have long sought to prove that Obama, Clinton and other senior members of the administration were asleep at the switch during the Benghazi attack and did not do enough to save Stevens. 
 
 The congressmen conclude that Panetta met Obama in the early evening of September 11, 2012, about the attack but did not have any further contact with him for the rest of the day. 
 
 The report says Clinton and Panetta did not speak at all about the unfolding crisis and Clinton did not speak with Obama until 10:30 p.m. that night -- six hours after the attack began and five hours after Stevens went missing. 
 
 The committee contrasts the level of administration engagement with the famous picture of the Obama war cabinet pictured in a Situation Room annex during the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. 
 
 "Benghazi should have merited the same level of attention and urgency," the excerpts from the analysis said. 
 
 Democrats accuse Committee chairman, South Carolina Rep. Gowdy and other Republicans on the panel of using the investigation to directly target Clinton and of seeking to wound her presidential ambitions. 
 
 Democrats released their own prebuttal of the Gowdy committee report on Monday, accusing the GOP of wasting public money on a political witch hunt and of seeking to wound their party's presidential nominee with their probe. ||||| Rep. Trey Gowdy and fellow Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi said that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department acted in a “shameful” manner in failing to turn over emails from her private email server, making it “impossible” to know whether everything about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Libya that left four Americans dead will ever be known. 
 
 In the committee’s final report, being released Tuesday, Republicans assert that stonewalling by the Obama administration — especially the State Department, Pentagon and CIA — delayed the completion of the investigation for months. The committee even threatened to begin contempt of Congress proceedings against Secretary of State John Kerry and CIA Director John Brennan for failing to comply with its subpoenas, according to a section of the final report obtained by Politico ahead of its release. 
 
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 The report blasts the administration for what Republicans say was repeated and willful noncompliance with a congressional investigation, forcing the Benghazi panel to use a series of under-the-radar subpoenas, subpoena threats and a warning that the committee would initiate contempt-of-Congress proceedings against Kerry and other officials if the department did not accede to its demands for information. Republicans say the State Department still has failed to turn over several thousand pages of documents related to an Accountability Review Board investigation into Benghazi. 
 
 Overall, the select committee issued more than a dozen subpoenas to federal agencies, and threatened to issue dozens more, including to top White House aides, say committee sources and the report. 
 
 “This ‘who’s on first’ routine orchestrated by [Clinton’s] private counsel and the State Department, which is ostensibly an apolitical government entity, is shameful,” the report states. “It was not merely Congress and the people it represents who were misled and manipulated, the State Department and the Secretary’s email arrangement undoubtedly delayed access to what happened to four brave Americans in Benghazi and the government’s response before, during and after the attacks.” 
 
 And Democrats have accused the committee of conducting a two-year witch hunt, seeking information that was already known or impossible to produce and dragging out the investigation for maximum political damage. The State Department has been more measured in its response, but also pointedly denies accusations of foot-dragging in a statement Tuesday. 
 
 "The Department cooperated extensively with the Benghazi Committee," department spokesman Mark Toner said. "The Committee received documents, briefings, and/or witness interviews from us every single month between August 2014 and June 2016. The Department provided every single witness the Committee asked for—over 50 current and former employees appeared for interviews, often requiring them to travel from abroad. We made over 50 document productions, totaling over 100,000 pages of documents. We provided eight briefings to members (of Congress) and staff, and Department witnesses appeared at all four of the Committee’s hearings." 
 
 In her testimony to the Benghazi committee last year and in numerous public statements, Clinton has denied wrongdoing in regard to the email server. 
 
 Still, she has conceded that using private email at State, which she said she did for convenience, was a mistake. “Looking back, it would’ve been better if I’d simply used a second email account and carried a second phone,” she said in March 2015. 
 
 The long tussle between the committee and the Obama administration led to some dramatic moments, according to the report and committee sources. During one meeting with State Department officials to talk about their slow response to the committee’s demands, Phil Kiko, the Republican staff director, walked in and slapped a stack of 20 subpoenas on the desk. The committee was preparing to issue a wave of subpoenas to diplomatic security personnel who were on the ground in Libya before and during the attack. But after the threat, State Department officials complied with the committee’s requests and brought in two of the personnel each week for interviews. 
 
 Subpoena threats were also used to secure testimony from national security adviser Susan Rice and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes. The White House agreed to allow the aides to be interviewed but kept dragging out scheduling for those sessions despite multiple inquiries, committee sources said. 
 
 Kiko threatened a subpoena unless the White House agreed to the proposed deposition dates. White House counsel Neil Eggleston hopped on a plane a few days later with two other White House employees to see Gowdy in Charlotte, North Carolina. They then negotiated the terms of the Rice and Rhodes’ interviews, panel sources said. 
 
 The “Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, Libya,” as the panel is formally known, received more than 75,000 pages of previously unreleased documents and interviewed dozens of new witnesses. However, the panel was still unable to obtain everything it wanted. 
 
 In probably the most closely followed section of the report — concerning Clinton’s use of a private email server that at one point was located in the basement of her home in Chappaqua, New York, and which is still under FBI investigation — Republicans condemned what they described as a “shell game” between Clinton’s lawyers and the State Department. 
 
 The committee knew by August 2014 that Clinton was using a private email address to conduct official State business. But Republicans were not aware of the “extent” that Clinton used that address or the fact that State Department officials did not have access to tens of thousands of Clinton emails and were trying to obtain them from her. State had been aware of the issue of Clinton emails for 14 months at that point, but it never told the committee. 
 
 When the Benghazi committee wrote David Kendall, Clinton’s lawyer, in early December 2014 seeking access to all of her emails, Clinton’s legal team privately sent them to the State Department instead. That made the department responsible for deciding what to turn over to the Benghazi panel, a process that took months to play out. Clinton and her lawyers had already gone through all the emails, deleting those she said were private and nonofficial, a move that infuriated Republicans. 
 
 “The manner in which the Secretary communicated during her tenure, the manner in which those records were housed and the manner in which the public record was self-scrutinized and self-selected makes it impossible to ever represent to those killed in Benghazi that the record is whole,” the report states. 
 
 The Clinton campaign and Democrats say that Republicans are just looking to score political points over the email issue, a claim supported by comments from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and others last year. But the committee insists its “interest in the Secretary’s emails is limited to their relevance in the investigation of the Benghazi attacks.” 
 
 Gowdy and other Benghazi panel Republicans say Clinton is to blame for her own problems. 
 
 “Had she used state.gov or employed a method of preserving public records other than simply hiring a private legal counsel to store, vet and disclose those public records, this would have never become an issue for the Committee,” the report says. 
 
 In addition to their battles with Clinton and the State Department, Republicans say the CIA and Defense Department were also slow to turn over documents and schedule interview requests. That prompted the Benghazi panel in February to threaten to hold Brennan in contempt of Congress. The CIA eventually turned over a series of rarely shared interagent instant messages about what was happening during the attack — a type of document committee staffers say that has never been shared previously with Congress. 
 
 The panel also eventually scheduled interviews with lower-level CIA officials who told the committee that they had erred on intelligence reports they wrote on Benghazi, surprising investigators who had no idea the officials would admit to such a conclusion, committee staffers said. 
 
 Benghazi committee staffers were allowed to read CIA emails only at agency headquarters and were not allowed to take their notes from the review outside the building. These notes had to be kept locked at CIA headquarters. The CIA “eventually offered to allow Committee staff to take their notes back to Committee offices — but only if CIA staff first reviewed the notes and applied various redactions to them,” according to the report. The Benghazi panel complained that none of these restrictions were ever imposed on the House Intelligence Committee. 
 
 Benghazi panel Republicans complained about the Pentagon’s response as well. 
 
 “The Defense Department was initially cooperative but this cooperation diminished during the course of the Committee’s investigation culminating in a factually deficient letter from a political appointee deliberately mischaracterizing efforts to obtain access to witnesses,” the report states. This was in reference to an April letter from a Pentagon official, Stephen Hedger, that accused the panel of using “unproductive” and “unfair” tactics to obtain documents and witness interviews. 
 
 Toner, the spokesman at State, accused the committee of drowning government officials with unreasonable demands for documents that added little or nothing to the understanding of the Benghazi attacks. 
 
 "The Committee repeatedly refused to narrow or focus their requests. As a result, we reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of irrelevant documents. Furthermore, a large amount of what we did provide the Committee is absent from the report," he said. 
 
 The Benghazi committee recommends that salaries for federal officials held in contempt of Congress be cut off and a special counsel be appointed for any criminal-contempt recommendation against an executive branch official. Right now, all such criminal cases are at the discretion of the Justice Department, which is highly unlikely to seek an indictment of an official from the same party as the president. In addition, the Benghazi panel wants an expedited process to handle civil contempt cases. ||||| Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) ranks his time on the House Select Committee on Benghazi among the lowest points of his career. 
 
 “This has been one of the saddest exercises I’ve ever engaged in in my 20 years in Congress,” he said Tuesday on MSNBC. 
 
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 “It’s been very partisan,” added Cummings, the panel’s ranking Democrat. "We’ve been locked out of so many things. 
 
 “Witnesses interviewed and we’re not told about it. Exculpatory evidence found out by the Republicans [and] they don’t tell us about it. A failure to allow us to have free access in regard to transcripts.” 
 
 Cummings accused Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy Trey GowdyChatter grows that Ryan could step down Lawmakers press Lynch for briefing on Yahoo secret email scanning reports Clinton IT aide pleads Fifth, skips hearing MORE (R-S.C.) of trying to prevent accountability for the panel’s GOP lawmakers. 
 
 “He is still not releasing certain transcripts,” he said. "I don’t think he wants the American people to see every syllable that has been talked about with regard to this issue. 
 
 “And I don’t think they want to be fact-checked,” Cummings added of Republicans. "That’s why they didn’t want us to have the report, because they knew we would fact-check it. 
 
 "They basically hid the report from us. It’s supposed to be a bipartisan effort. We literally got the report about three hours ago.” 
 
 Cummings added the panel’s report Tuesday does not alter the public’s understanding of the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. 
 
 “All I want to say is that there’s been a lot of granularity that has been added, but the facts remain the same. There was no stand-down order. There was no effort to politicize the right’s talking points. And there’s no evidence of gun trading.” 
 
 The Benghazi panel on Tuesday released an 800-page report filled with new criticism of former secretary of State Hillary Clinton Hillary Rodham ClintonTrump bullish on Minnesota as campaign hops to blue states Clinton makes no mention of FBI news in Cleveland rally Conway: Comey mishandled Clinton investigation from beginning MORE. 
 
 It concludes that Clinton and other officials did not adequately heed concerns about growing extremism in Libya. 
 
 The summary also accuses Clinton, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, of falsely blaming the violence on an anti-Muslim video behind unrest elsewhere. 
 
 Cummings and other panel Democrats on Monday released their rebuttal to the GOP’s report in an attempt to debunk its findings. 
 
 “We are issuing our own report today because, after spending more than two years and $7 million in taxpayer funds in one of the longest and most partisan congressional investigations in history, it is long past time for the select committee to conclude its work,” they said.
– The Republican-led House Benghazi committee released its final report Tuesday after two years of investigations. The 800-page report lays out the committee's findings on the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead. Here's what you need to know: Benghazi is "unlikely to be a potent tool for weakening Clinton" in the general election, as the committee and report have little credibility and aren't seen as serious by many, the Los Angeles Times reports. Easily distilling the massive report, the Washington Post lays out its five "most serious accusations," including that the CIA "missed warning signs" and "misread how dangerous Libya ... was at the time." New evidence of “culpability or wrongdoing” on Clinton's part is lacking in the report, despite it being “one of the longest, costliest, and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history," according to the New York Times. Given a lack of new evidence against Clinton, the Weekly Standard uses the report as a tool for blaming Obama. “The Obama administration knowingly provided the American people a false story about the Benghazi attack, its causes, and its consequences," the Standard states. How various government agencies responded to the Benghazi crisis is one of the more interesting aspects of the report. According to Politico, a conference call in the midst of the attack included a conversation about whether Marines should wear their uniforms if deployed. Marines changed in and out of their uniforms multiple times while waiting for an answer and were never deployed. According to the Hill, a Democratic lawmaker on the House Benghazi committee calls it "one of the saddest exercises I've ever engaged in" during 20 years in Congress. He accuses Republicans of hiding the final report from Democrats to avoid having it fact-checked. Zeroing in on what it calls the "most revealing paragraph" in the report, Vox concludes there's a pattern of spinning "non-damning facts as damning" for the Obama administration. The paragraph in question admits there were no US forces close enough to prevent the attack but insists that, in itself, was a failure on the part of the White House. "I think it's time to move on," the AP quotes Clinton as saying after the release of the report, which she says includes nothing not previously discovered by an accountability board.