WASHINGTON -- At 10 a.m., Hillary Clinton will take a seat at the witness table in a large, packed U.S. House hearing room to testify before the special committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks, one of the most scrutinized events of her presidential campaign to date.
You can watch the hearing here or it surely will make an appearance on a cable news network near you. Here's what to watch for.
- Can Clinton keep her cool? Clinton's Benghazi testimony before the U.S. Senate has been long remembered for one moment when she was jawing with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and said with some exasperation: "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Clinton's point was the reasons for the attack were less important than the fact that four Americans were dead, but the quote lives on as Republicans use the incident against her. She will try to avoid such a moment today.
- Can Republicans play it straight? Clinton and her allies have pounced on statements by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and others indicating that the special committee's prime motive is to take down Clinton politically, not get to the bottom of the well-investigated incident. There will be plenty of scrutiny on Republicans' approach to Clinton and how far they stray from the attack. As Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Lithonia, put it: "This hearing coming up is just a culmination of a political witch hunt, and it's coming at a time when the witch hunt as been exposed publicly, repeatedly, from corroborating sources for what it is."
- Will there be any new revelations? Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Coweta County, the committee's only Georgian, said the notion that all of the overlapping investigations into Benghazi uncovered everything are false. For starters, the committee now has Clinton's emails, dead ambassador Chris Stevens' emails and Clinton confidante Sid Blumenthal's emails. Said Westmoreland: "There are going to be a lot of things coming out that are going to make the American people say: 'Hey, they have been doing something. They have been investigating this and it's not about Hillary. It's just not.'"
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