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“Given the volume and, frankly, the details of the correspondence between this witness and former Secretary Clinton, it’s important for the committee to comb the depth and breadth and, frankly, the reliability of that information that he passed on,” chairman Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, said.

Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, will release the documents after five days—or sooner with the consent of ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland.

“If chairman Gowdy wants to release the Blumenthal documents—by the way, which, there is no smoking gun in these documents—he ought to release them only if he releases a transcript of the deposition that’s taking place today,” Cummings said.

Cummings and other committee Democrats emerging from the deposition accused the Republican majority of conducting an inquest against Clinton, who officially kicked off her presidential campaign on Saturday in New York.

“This Benghazi select committee has become the committee to investigate Hillary Clinton,” Cummings said.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington, called the committee’s Blumenthal inquiry a distraction.

“It’s been, gosh, almost a year now since this committee was formed and they haven’t really produced anything. And now, of course, we’re sidelining into stuff involving Mr. Blumenthal and Hillary that is only tangentially at best involved with Benghazi,” Smith said. “So I think it’s pretty clear at this point that this is a political investigation focused on Hillary.”