US House votes to start new Benghazi probe; Democrats call it political and weigh boycott

WASHINGTON – The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to establish a new investigation of the 2012 assault in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador there.

Republicans are focusing on the issue as congressional elections loom in November and as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat, weighs a run for president in 2016.

Democrats say the Benghazi inquiry is actually a political ploy and are considering a boycott. They will meet Friday morning to decide on their next step.

Four Americans died in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission.

Republicans accuse the Obama administration of misleading the American people about the nature of the attack during a presidential campaign and blocking multiple congressional inquiries.

The Obama administration says officials tried to provide the public with the best information available at a time when U.S diplomatic posts were facing angry demonstrations across the Muslim world over a YouTube video mocking Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

The administration originally attributed Benghazi to a similar protest that extremists hijacked, but retracted that account amid severe criticism.

A bitterly divided House voted 232-186 to establish the panel that Speaker John Boehner insisted would answer questions that linger almost 20 months after the attack.

After the vote, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was noncommittal about whether Democrats would participate on the special committee, but assailed the new probe. “Our nation deserves better than yet another deeply partisan and political review,” she said.

The panel’s investigation will be the eighth on Benghazi. Independent, bipartisan and Republican-led probes have faulted the State Department for inadequate security at the outpost.

No attacker has yet been brought to justice.

Boehner’s legislation creates a select House committee through the end of the year. It will have to be reapproved when a new Congress begins in January or go out of existence. The select committee has no explicit financial constraints.