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Heat’s on Hill over Benghazi

'Last November, the president said he was ‘happy to cooperate in any way Congress wants.’ This is his chance.' — House Speaker John Boehner

‘Last November, the president said he was ‘happy to cooperate in any way Congress wants.’ This is his chance.’ — House Speaker John Boehner (AP)

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WASHINGTON — Republicans are turning up the heat on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the wake of this week’s emotional hearing on the terror attack at the US consulate in Benghazi — with calls to launch a further probe into the deaths of four Americans there.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) yesterday called on the White House to release more e-mails involving the State Department from the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, as members of his caucus pushed for a special committee to explore the attack further.

“Last November, the president said he was ‘happy to cooperate in any way Congress wants,’ ” Boehner told reporters. “This is his chance.”

The hearings “raised serious questions about the administration’s efforts to respond to the Americans under fire at the annex in Benghazi,” wrote Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) in a letter to Boehner signed by more than half the GOP conference and calling for a special committee with broad jurisdiction and subpoena power.

“We’ve not gotten to the bottom of actually what happened within the depths of this administration,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), a member of the House Oversight Committee that conducted the hearing, said. “The facts are damning to this administration.”

Democrats argued that the new effort to probe Benghazi is a political attack on Clinton.

“It’s clear to me that this is political and that Republicans want to damage her if she runs for president and soften her up if she runs for president, and I don’t think it will work,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx).

Yesterday, America Rising, a group with ties to former Romney staffers, slammed Clinton in a brutal new Web ad, which features Clinton saying, “I take responsibility,” but then seeming to weasel out of it.

Greg Hicks, who was the number two diplomat in Libya, testified Wednesday that he spoke to Clinton the night of the attack, and that staff on the ground knew immediately it was a planned attack and not a protest as the White House first claimed.