Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin appeared on Capitol Hill on Friday to testify before the House Select Benghazi Committee investigating the 2012 attack that killed four Americans.
Abedin, who worked with Clinton at the State Department and is now vice chairwoman of her presidential campaign, met with investigators behind closed doors for more than six hours.
Abedin spoke briefly with reporters before exiting the Capitol, thanking the committee and staff and saying she was proud of serving at the State Department.
"I answered all their questions to the best of my ability," she said.
Clinton and her allies said the investigation is politically motivated after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy linked Clinton’s dropping poll numbers to the committee's work.
“It is a partisan vehicle, as admitted by the House Republican majority leader, Mr. McCarthy, to drive down my poll numbers,” Clinton said during the first Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said it is unclear why the committee has asked Abedin to testify “given her lack of knowledge about the events surrounding Benghazi.”
Republicans contend that a number of publicly released emails between Abedin and Clinton about Benghazi, along with her role as the deputy chief of staff at the State Department during the September 2012 attacks, more than justify her testimony.
Clinton will testify before the panel next Thursday in a public hearing.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Benghazi committee, told NBC's Andrea Mitchell that Republicans brought Abedin in "as a spectacle."
"I think there's an obsession with, again, trying to derail the campaign of Hillary Clinton," Cummings said. "Period."
