the party of witch hunters and the STUPID
Fallout From McCarthy’s Benghazi Slip Intensifies As Dems Threaten To Declassify Testimony
October 5, 2015Marc Belisle Politics
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BACKLASH FROM FOOLISH ADMISSION ABOUT BENGHAZI INVESTIGATION GROWS
On Monday, House Republicans received heavy blow-back following an unwise, yet honest, comment by the House Majority Leader.
Kevin McCarthy admitted to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the Benghazi Select Committee is a partisan witch hunt to make Hillary Clinton less popular on September 30th. The Republicans’ likely replacement for retiring Speaker of the House, John Boehner, then did it again on CNN. Boehner went into damage control overdrive, saying that the Benghazi inquisition was never about Hillary Clinton, while attacking Hillary Clinton. Democrats have seized on the gaffe, and the fallout from the tacit admission of a gross misuse of taxpayer funds continues to grow.
On Monday, Democrats on the Benghazi Select Committee launched a broadside against the Republicans on the Committee. A letter signed by Democratic members of the Committee, Elijah Cummings, Adam Smith, Adam Schiff, Linda Sanchez and Tammy Duckworth, accused Republicans of treating testimony by a top Clinton aide as classified intelligence for purely political reasons.
In early September, former State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills was grilled by the House committee for nine hours. The Hill reported that Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) characterized Mills’ testimony as “professional and fact-centric.” Yet, when Democrats requested that the transcript of her testimony be made public, Gowdy responded,
“I’d rather err on the side of y’all being upset with me that I’m not releasing it than err on the side of releasing it and then having to explain afterwards why I did it.”
Ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings was “worried that continued secrecy allows for Republicans to selectively leak portions to the press out of context, in order to paint people in a negative light,” according to The Hill.
Monday’s letter accuses Republicans of doing exactly that, keeping most of Mills’ testimony secret, while leaking small portions of it to hurt Clinton. The letter stated,
“Despite claims that the Committee would be run with integrity, Republicans have engaged in a series of selective leaks of inaccurate and incomplete information in an effort to attack Secretary Clinton with unsubstantiated or previously debunked allegations. The latest example occurred after the Select Committee’s interview of Cheryl mills, the former State Department Chief of Staff.”
The letter argued that it was time to release the transcript of that interview, and threatened to do so without bipartisan support.
“We note that you have objected to Democrats releasing Committee documents until the conclusion of the investigation, but you already crossed that bridge yourself when you unilaterally released a subset of Secretary Clinton’s emails on June 22 with no debate or vote by Committee Members.
“Therefore, we plan to begin the process of correcting the public record by releasing the transcript of Ms. Mills’ interview. Since you have indicated your unwillingness to do this in a bipartisan manner, we plan to do so ourselves.”
The letter argued that the Republicans’ decision to treat the interview as classified “made little sense” for several reasons. The interview was treated as unclassified, staff without security clearances were allowed to attend, and no classified information was shared. Stenographers treated the interview as unclassified, and prepared an unclassified transcript. The letter continues,
“In addition, your staff emailed a copy of the transcript to our staff on our unclassified email system, which, ironically, is precisely what Republicans have accused Secretary Clinton of doing. The difference is that your own staff transmitted Ms. Mills’ interview transcript on an unclassified email system after you declared publicly that you were treating it as classified.
“Finally, just hours after the interview concluded, Select Committee Member Lynn Westmoreland appeared on Fox News and freely discussed numerous details from the interview.”
The letter says that Mills, “debunked numerous Republican conspiracy theories,” and Republicans, “may have their own partisan political reasons for wanting to keep Ms. Mills’ interview transcript out of the public eye,” but they can’t make it classified to avoid, “embarrassment to the Select Committee.”
The letter cites examples of subsequent media stories that relied on anonymous Republican sources with erroneous information, which characterized Mills’ testimony as damning to her and to Clinton.
It is clear that McCarthy’s slip-up of admitting that the Benghazi investigations are pure political theater was a major tactical error for Republicans. While it has long been obvious that the Committee was not going to find any wrongdoing, Democrats, as the minority party, were forced to go along with the hearings. Now, the man most likely to become next Speaker of the House has allowed Democrats to call the entire Benghazi investigation into question. |
