Hillary Clinton's top adviser Huma Abedin to testify before House Benghazi

A Hillary Clinton confidante spent hours on Friday before the House committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, attack that left four Americans dead.

Since then, a fired staffer has accused the committee of dismissing him because he refused to target the Democratic presidential frontrunner, and a moderate House Republican from Clinton's adoptive home state of New York has said the committee was "designed" to hit her.

The biggest blow to the committee's work came from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who bragged about how its work had damaged Clinton.

"I wanted to honor the service of those lost and injured in the Benghazi attacks", Abedin said.

In a written statement, Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Abedin "has been nothing but entirely cooperative with the Committee's requests".

The chairman of the committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), had said those claims were "unfortunate". Ted Kaufman, one of his closest advisers, is sending out this letter to Biden alumni, as Peter reported, basically hinting, "You know, we still may get into this thing", but has his moment passed? Abedin also reportedly worked during that period for the Clinton Foundation, a global charity that works with businesses, governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals.

"He has brought his oversize personality and his reality television experience to the highest level of American politics and seems to be getting a very positive response among a large part of the Republican electorate", she said.

The special investigation faces fresh scrutiny 17 months after it was empanelled, with Democrats charging it is more interested in ruining Clinton's presidential bid than reaching conclusions about how the executive branch handled the attack and its aftermath. Married to former Congressman Anthony Weiner, Abedin has even drawn attacks from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

She's meeting behind closed doors with investigators Friday. Abedin is the latest of several Clinton aides to appear before the committee and it comes just six days before the former Secretary of State will give her own testimony.

Clinton herself is scheduled to testify on Thursday in public. "Because she's untrustable", he said in September.

"Running investigations in a private, fact-centric way is unquestionably the right way to conduct a serious investigation, "Gowdy said".

Gowdy and other Republicans say the committee has been and remains focused on those killed in Benghazi and on providing a definitive account of the attacks. That's around two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the first hurdle Hillary Clinton will have to clear to become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

"While violence was going up in Libya, why was our security going down?" he asked.