Late Friday, word oozed out of Hillary Clinton’s camp that she would testify before [mc_name name=’Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’G000566′ ]’s Benghazi committee.

Hillary Clinton agreed on Friday to appear at an October public hearing before the House Benghazi Committee, her campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement.

But the House Select Committee on Benghazi is pushing back against the 2016 Democratic frontrunner’s Saturday-morning announcement.

A panel Republican source said although GOP staff and Clinton’s legal team have been discussing dates for the past week or so — and seem to have settled on Oct. 22 — her lawyer David Kendall has asked for two basic conditions they’ve not agreed to: that the date not be moved and that the panel keep its questions within certain parameters

At first blush, you wonder what Clinton hopes to gain from this. If she was going to appear she should have done so early so the headlines would be a distant memory during the election season. By moving it into late October she is making it fairly fresh on people’s minds when the primary season starts.

Two reasons come to mind. First, nearly 60% of Americans consider Clinton to be an egregious liar, the remaining 40% are Clinton Foundation employees and the mentally ill. Second, she is being slowly eaten alive by the investigation into her use of private email to send highly classified information to colleagues and to Russian and Chinese hackers.

She needs to change the subject.

But she’s obviously trying to be as clever as any addled old lady would be under these circumstances. Note that here lawyer’s letter says the panel has to agree not to move the date and to limit the scope of its questions. Gowdy is having none of it:

But the negotiations between Clinton’s lawyer and the committee do not appear settled. The panel released a statement Saturday afternoon saying it “will not, now or ever, accept artificial limitations on its congressionally-directed jurisdiction.”

“Accordingly, once there is an agreement on the date and a better understanding of how, if at all, Secretary Clinton’s lawyer’s latest writing differs from previous ones, the Committee will announce said hearing date,” said communications director Jamal Ware in the statement.

The most likely scenario is that Clinton walks out of the hearing at some point and claims that there was an agreement with Gowdy and the committee violated it. If anyone’s Victim Card was ever maxed out, it is Hillary’s but she doesn’t seem to know it.

It is hard to see how she survives an actual encounter with Gowdy and his team and walks away looking like anything other than an unindicted felon. And then watch for John Kerry…