According to a former staffer in Hillary Clinton’s State Department, “Clinton confidants were part of an operation to ‘separate’ damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.”

The staffer, former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, claims State Department employees pored over boxes of materials related to the Benghazi attacks after hours. Maxwell says he was not informed about the operation, but heard about it indirectly. His visit to a Foggy Bottom basement on a Sunday afternoon reportedly revealed a State Department office director culling files. Via Sharyl Attkisson at The Daily Signal:

“She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisers.
“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”
A few minutes after he arrived, Maxwell says, in walked two high-ranking State Department officials.

On Monday morning on Fox News, Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, identified the officials as Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan.

Along with three colleagues, Maxwell was placed on paid administrative leave by the State Department in 2012, though no charges were filed against him. He was cleared and reinstated in 2013, shortly after which he retired.

The revelations certainly raise questions — Why, for instance, did Maxwell wait so long to divulge this information? — but if true, this is a cover-up that could deal a serious blow to the Hillary 2016 presidential machine.

One hopes that the House Select Committee on Benghazi will be able to get to the bottom of the matter. The committee begins hearings Wednesday.