'Pathetic:' Hillary Clinton calls out Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks on impeachment threat

Hillary Clinton stood her ground firmly during 11 hours of questioning over the 2012 Benghazi attacks, parrying Republican blows at a high-stakes congressional hearing that could impact her bid for the White House. The revelation that she used her personal email server for official mails while she was Secretary of State, has hurt her credibility and her trustworthiness ratings sharply nosedived among voters.

Her smile widened as she basked in the applause.

Contradicting him, Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington, told Mrs Clinton: "The goal of this committee is to prosecute you".

Another sign was the money rolling into the Clinton campaign.

Then there was the media reaction.

For months, Clinton's campaign had flagged Thursday's hearing before the House panel investigating the September 2012 attack at the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, in which four people were killed, including Ambassador Chris Stevens as a key hurdle for a candidate.

"Isn't that pathetic?" Clinton said in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Friday.

Pompeo, however, provided no other conclusive evidence that the committee learned "an bad lot" at the hearing.

"I think right now she is in a better position than she has been throughout the entire race to coalesce all wings of the party", said Grossman.

And perhaps as a result, her rivals for the nomination have been dropping out, shrinking the Democratic field from five to three.

Well, I think it is new to tell the American people she said something completely different in private. Speaking directly to Jordan, she said, "The insinuations that you are making do a great disservice" to the diplomats and others involved.

Carly Fiorina has said that Secretary Clinton "has blood on her hands", Mike Huckabee accused her of "ignoring the warning calls from dying Americans in Benghazi", Senator Rand Paul said "Benghazi was a 3:00 a.m. phone call that she never picked up", and Senator Lindsay Graham tweeted, "Where the hell were you on the night of the Benghazi attack?"

On Friday, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen told reporters that "it's time now to close this select committee".

The hearing surfaced little new information about the attacks in Benghazi and landed no blows to Clinton's presidential aspirations, leaving Republicans without a memorable moment to promote as Clinton approaches the first primary contests.

"What you saw was the Trey Gowdy I've known ever since he got into politics", said Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political scientist who advised Gowdy when he first ran for a local prosecutor's job in South Carolina.

The bickering among committee members that punctuated Thursday's hearing only reinforced the point. "Even as political theater, it hasn't worked", wrote the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

"After meeting with (Minority) Leader (Nancy) Pelosi today, we are calling on Speaker (John) Boehner to immediately shut down this abusive, wasteful, and obviously partisan effort", they added. The fact that State Department personnel in Libya made approximately 600 requests for better security in Benghazi, yet security remained pathetically slim, is a serious indictment of Hillary Clinton.