Dem nails ‘partisan’ Benghazi panel: Congress didn't try to humiliate Reagan after '83 Beirut bombing

During Thursday's Benghazi committee hearing, Washington Rep. Adam Smith (D) accused the commission of being nothing more than a partisan attack against Hillary Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president.

Smith said that after 17 months and $4.7 million, "this committee is simply not doing its job and I don't really think it should have been formed in the first place." He said the committee had an "obsession" with the former Secretary of State's emails that has taken it off course, and noted that even committee chairman Trey Gowdy's (R-SC) opening remarks were a "defense of the committee's existence."

"Again, I think we've seen that this committee is focused on you," Smith said to Clinton. "I'm the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. I don't see the Department of Defense here, I don't see the CIA here. There were many, many other agencies involved in this and yet yours has been the one that they have obsessively focused on."

He then brought up the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine and French military barracks in Beirut that killed almost 300 servicemen.

"A Democratic Congress at the time did a fair and quick investigation of what was an unspeakable tragedy," Smith said. "Two separate suicide bombings four months apart, and there was clearly inadequate security. But the focus there was not on partisanship, not on embarrassing the Reagan administration, but on actually figuring out what happened and on how we can better protect Americans."

Watch Smith's comments here: