In a shocking new allegation, a former high-ranking State Department official says Hillary Clinton’s aides withheld documents from the Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigating the attack.
Raymond Maxwell, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department alleges that Clinton’s aides “separated” damaging documents that could have hurt Hillary Clinton and other top aides. The ARB was set up by the State Department to independently review the Department’s conduct leading up to the Benghazi attack.
According to Maxwell, the review took place over a weekend in a basement room of Foggy Bottom. Maxwell, who was not invited, stopped by and saw an employee with close connections to Clinton’s top advisors pouring over the documents; two other high ranking officials were also seen. He was later one of only four people blamed for the Benghazi attack though he was cleared a year later. He claims he was made a “scapegoat.” In a telling exchange, Maxwell states that:
“[The aide connected to Hillary] told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisors.
“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”
The ARB, which absolved Clinton and top aides of any wrongdoing without even interviewing her, has previously been criticized after it was revealed Clinton appointed four of the five members on the board.