Updated 12:09 p.m. | The House is poised to pass a resolution on Thursday afternoon creating a special committee to investigate the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, ensuring the issue will be kept alive well into the presidential election season.  

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., has already been named chairman of the special panel, and Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio is expected to name the remaining six Republicans on Friday, according to aides.  

“I don’t think we’re ready to make that announcement today, but I would hope in the near future,” Boehner said during his weekly news conference on Thursday.  

Gowdy, in an opinion piece in USA Today , said the committee is necessary because the White House has not been forthright with congressional investigators about their response to the 2012 attack on a U.S. consulate.  

“The select committee should strive to uncover every relevant witness, document or other piece of evidence so our fellow citizens can know the facts and the full truth,” he wrote.  

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland sent Boehner a letter late Tuesday evening calling the special committee’s makeup of seven Republicans and five Democrats “unwise.”
In their letter, Pelosi and Hoyer stopped short of saying they would decline to appoint five Democrats from their caucus to serve on the panel, but senior House Democrats, including Assistant Leader James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., have suggested a boycott, with Clyburn adding that he wouldn’t be “bringing the noose to my own hanging.”
 
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