The House Select Committee on Benghazi reportedly plans to release the findings of its redundant investigation into the terror attacks just in time for the 2016 general election. Fox News fought hard to establish the committee, and has devoted significant airtime attempting to link Benghazi to Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions.

According to an April 22 Bloomberg report, the Republican-led House Select Committee will release a report “just months before the 2016 presidential election”detailing its ongoing investigation into the September 11, 2012, attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) claimed in a statement that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's “decision to seek the presidency of the United States does not and will not impact the work of the committee.” A spokesperson for the Benghazi Committee cited “factors beyond the committee's control,” including alleged obstruction by  the White House, for delaying the release of the inquiry.

Ranking Democrat on the committee Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) responded, accusing House Republicans of targeting Clinton and noting that with the delays, “this investigation is on track to last longer than the investigations of Iran-Contra, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, and it will squander more than $6 million in taxpayer funds in the process.”

The Benghazi Select Committee is the product of a sustained campaign by Fox News and its affiliates to scandalize an American tragedy for political gain. The network's Benghazi Hoax, which Republican Mitt Romney tried and failed to capitalize on during the 2012 election, seems primed to be deployed against Hillary Clinton should she win the Democratic presidential nomination 2016.

From September 2012 to May 2014, a period of 20 months, Fox aired an astounding 1,098 evening and primetime segments dedicated to Benghazi, including several segments calling for the establishment of a special panel or committee to investigate the attacks and their aftermath. 105 of those segments raised the specter of Benghazi as a supposed factor against Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions.

In December 2013, Fox and its right-wing media allies attacked The New York Times after its investigation of Benghazi debunked several cherished right-wing media myths. 

By November and December of 2014, when a separate GOP-controlled investigation exonerated both Clinton and Obama of culpability for the attacks and their aftermath, Fox News began blasting Republicans on that committee for being “soft on the Obama administration,” and called on the newly-formed Benghazi Select Committee to take a stronger stance. And in March 2015, Fox capitalized on a botched Times report on Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email account while serving as secretary of state to revive its Benghazi witch hunt. The network even adopted Benghazi committee Chairman Gowdy's unsubstantiated claim that Clinton may have obscured relevant emails from previous inquiries to hype the need for further investigations.

As Bloomberg notes, the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi have been subject to numerous congressional inquiries by at least seven different committees, as well as an independent review by the State Department. None uncovered any wrong-doing on the part of then-Secretary Clinton, her State Department staff, or members of the Obama administration.