Ahead of Hillary Clinton's appearance before the Select Committee on Benghazi later this week, House Democrats released a report Monday concluding that interviews conducted by the panel discredit GOP claims about Clinton's actions during the 2012 attacks.
"This report shows that no witnesses we interviewed substantiated these wild Republican conspiracy theories about Secretary Clinton and Benghazi. It's time to bring this taxpayer-funded fishing expedition to an end," Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, said in a statement accompanying the 146-page report.
Based on 54 interviews, the Democrats said the committee found no evidence that Clinton ordered the military to stand down on the night of the attacks, no evidence she personally approved a reduction in security before the attacks and no evidence Clinton or her aides oversaw an operation to scrub or destroy documents related to Benghazi, among other findings.
Documents obtained by the committee confirmed Clinton's earlier testimony about her actions that night, the report said, as did the interviews with Mills and Sullivan.
After Clinton learned about the attack in the afternoon of Sep. 11, 2012, for example, the report said Clinton held a phone call with then-Libyan President Mohammed Magariaf, a conference call with her closest State Department aides and a secure video teleconference with the White House and agency officials about the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Mills (Clinton's Deputy of Staff.) told the panel that she remembers during the video teleconference, Clinton "said we need to be taking whatever steps we can, to do whatever we can to secure our people" and said she remembered President Obama being 100 percent behind whatever needed to be done, the report said.
The report which you can read here, is actually pretty interesting, and it REALLY undermines the Republican talking points on Benghazi and Hillary Clinton's culpability.
Get a load of this portion here:
Chairman Gowdy has attempted to defend the Select Committee’s record by explaining that it has broken new ground in witness interviews. On October 7, 2015, he wrote: “The Committee has interviewed over 50 witnesses to date who have never before been interviewed.” However, this claim is inaccurate, and the Washington Post Fact Checker referred to it as an effort to “hype the numbers.”
The Select Committee has conducted a total of 54 transcribed interviews and depositions to date. Previous congressional committees and the independent Accountability Review Board (ARB) had already spoken to 23 of these individuals. In other words, the actual number of “new” interviews is 31—significantly lower than the 50 interviews cited by the Chairman.
Moreover, the majority of the Select Committee’s 31 new interviews have been with State Department employees, and they have included current and former campaign officials, IT employees, press officials, and others who had little or nothing to do with the attacks in Benghazi.
The reputation of this House Select Committee is now so in tatters that Trey Gowdy is now attempting a little damage control:
Benghazi committee Chair Trey Gowdy (R-SC) is now returning $6,000 in political donations that are indirectly tied to a PAC that ran a nasty anti-Hillary Clinton ad showing the grave of the U.S. ambassador killed in the 2012 attacks, the Washington Post reported Monday.
Gowdy is coughing up the money after the paper inquired about ties between Gowdy and Dan Backer, who used to serve as treasurer for Gowdy's now-defunct leadership PAC. Backer is now the treasurer of the The Stop Hillary PAC, which aired the ad that flashed images of all four Americans killed in the Benghazi attacks in addition to Ambassador Chris Stevens' grave, during the first Democratic presidential primary debate last week.
Hillary Clinton is going to walk into that committee hearing on Thursday with the wind at her back, and face a room full of nervous House Republicans who are going to be hyper aware of the cameras focused on them and second guessing every one of their questions.
It should be highly entertaining.
Hillary Clinton is an American hero
ReplyDelete66gardeners
Lol. Classic Hillary sycophant. Did that title happen when she 'dodged' that sniper fire in Bosnia? Or was it earned from her silence and enabling of a sexual predator? The irony.
Delete1:04 Hillary was my hero when she championed health care and families (It Takes A Village) whilst First Lady.
DeleteSo, go fuck yourself if you don't feel everyone is enfuckingtitled to an opinion without being belittled by a horse's ass.
It will suck to be you 1:41 when Hillary is the President of the United States of America for eight years.
DeleteSo which was it...
DeleteWhen she dodged that sniper fire?
Or, her enabling her sexual predator husband for decades? (champion of women yeah baby)
2:14 It is highly doubtful that Hillary will be president. You are pulling the wool over your eyes.
@2:46
Delete"2:14 It is highly doubtful that Hillary will be president. You are pulling the wool over your eyes."
They said pretty much the same thing about President Obama at this stage of the game in 2007.
2:14 Hopefully, it will suck as badly to be me during the reign of the last 12 presidents.
DeleteMy personal economic expansions took place when a Democrat was at the rudder. I was compressed during Republican years. If the reverse was true for you, then you are not only a horse's ass but also a war monger.
Uh Leland.... They pretty much said Hillary was a sure thing.... same as they are saying now.... in 2007.
DeleteTruly though thanks for teeing that one up. Are you still a scientist lol?
Since Al Gore couldn't convince Senator Warren to make the race, this time he'll go it himself. And why not? Climate change denial is all but a dead letter and the 45th President will take office with a mandate for action.
Delete@3:51
DeleteFirst, I never said a thing about being a scientist.
Second, you obviously completely - and deliberately - missed the point when I pointed out President Obama was considered a low possibility in 2007. I said absolutely nothing about Hillary in that race. I was pointing out - just so your mind might grasp the idea - that the current president was believed to have little chance then. And I was doing that because YOU said it is doubtful Hillary would be president, which, to most people, would have destroyed the argument YOU made in your original statement. NOBODY knows yet.
Of course, with your acerbic, destructive, self-believed so-called wit, you will come up with something inane and hateful, which is why you get so many negative comments.
And T-Rump is busy destroying Bush...oh happy days!
ReplyDeleteDonald Trump is destroying Jeb Bush: Why his 9/11 gambit could be the last straw
...It took a while, but the Republican race has finally gotten down and dirty as you knew it must. Aside from the very real frustration of dealing with fools, clowns and oddballs dominating the large pack of candidates, at some point someone was going to have to go mano a mano with Donald Trump. Looks like first up is Jeb Bush.
This past weekend, the Donald finally pushed a button that was too much for Jeb to bear: He made the factual observation that Jeb’s brother had been president on 9/11. Well, all hell broke loose, as every GOP establishment figure rose up in untamed fury that Trump would be rude enough to bring such a thing up. Why, that’s sacrilege.
Bush followed up with a bizarre tweet which encapsulates the central vulnerability of his campaign and calls into question his entire rationale for running.
Donald Trump is blaming Jeb's big brother for 9/11. And Jeb, for his part, is responding in miserable form
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/19/donald_trump_is_destroying_jeb_bush_why_his_911_gambit_could_be_the_last_straw/
...What this interview showed is, especially if Bush is the nominee, the choice of the Republicans to make “Benghazi” a catchphrase during the 2016 campaign runs a strong chance of backfiring. You can guess at why Republicans thought it was just a peachy idea to hold a bunch of obviously politicized congressional hearings that were clearly never going to turn up diddly squat.
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/19/jeb_bush_is_completely_toast_donald_trump_and_jake_tapper_just_ended_all_white_house_dreams/
Jeb doesn’t seem to realize that every time a Republican bellows “Four Americans died on Clinton’s watch!” and in the next breath insist, “How dare you say George Bush didn’t keep us safe on his watch,” something doesn’t quite track. Even Americans who are otherwise too busy to pay attention to the granular details can tell that this is a very strange construction. If you watch the video, Jeb himself misses more than a couple of beats when Tapper brings it up — he obviously felt the dissonance.
DeleteThis should be good. I hope Hillary makes mincemeat out of the Republican committee members.
ReplyDeleteI hope they all put on their Depends because she is going to make them pee their pants.
DeleteHillary is of that female age where they tinkle every time they cackle. No doubt she will be wearing hers under her North Korean styled pant suit.
DeleteJake Tapper stuns Jeb Bush: If your brother is blameless for 9/11 why is Hillary Clinton responsible for Benghazi?
ReplyDeleteJeb! stammers his way through a confused defense of W after the CNN host asks the most logical question ever
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/19/jake_tapper_stuns_jeb_bush_if_your_brother_is_blameless_for_911_why_is_hillary_clinton_responsible_for_benghazi/
Again? Isn't this getting a bit old already?
ReplyDeleteFunny, that's what I kept asking every time an IRS/Benghazi/Acorn/PlannedParenthood investigation was formed
DeleteState Department officials delivered 1,296 new pages of emails from Amb. Chris Stevens, who was killed in the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, to the committee investigating the incident Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteThe document production came just two days before Hillary Clinton is slated to appear before the House Select Committee on Benghazi to testify about her handling of the attack. The select committee had already received more than 3,200 pages of Stevens' emails.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/state-dept.-delivers-chris-stevens-emails-and-benghazi-documents/article/2574511
Focus Will Be on Questioners, Not on Hillary
ReplyDeleteThis Thursday, Hillary Clinton will appear (once again) in front of the latest congressional committee to investigate Benghazi. The first seven investigations have turned up precisely nothing, but that didn't stop Republicans from trying one last time to do political damage to Clinton. This latest committee was necessary (obviously) to keep the issue alive right into the 2016 campaign season. But now the committee itself is under the public's microscope, which means that the focus will be more on the Republican questioners this Thursday, and not so much on Clinton.
This turnabout was possible because a few Republicans admitted the true political nature of the committee to journalists. This gave the media permission to stop pretending the committee was created for any other reason than to take Clinton down. The public saw through this a long time ago, but it's now impossible for the media to ignore anymore.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/focus-will-be-on-question_b_8334366.html
Democrats caught Republican Benghazi Select Committee members in a STONE COLD LIE when Trey Gowdy and Lynn Westmoreland claimed that Congress did not have access to Amb. Ted Stevens’ emails.
ReplyDeleteSelect Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said on Face The Nation, “none of the seven previous committees bothered to access the emails of our Ambassador.”
Republican Select Committee Member Rep. Mike Pompeo said on Meet The Press, “How on earth could any of the other committees have completed their work properly without access to the senior person on the ground’s emails?”
Today on CNN, Committee Member Lynn Westmoreland said on CNN, “Wouldn’t you want to know the emails of the guy that was there that was murdered and what he had asked for as far as help from the people he worked for? We’ve just now gotten those emails. We have just now gotten them. Nobody else had requested them. I haven’t had a chance to read them. We didn’t get them until the day before yesterday.”
The Democrats on the Benghazi Committee responded by crushing this Republican lie:
Contrary to Republican claims, multiple committees of Congress—including the Oversight Committee on which Chairman Gowdy serves—had access to many of Ambassador Stevens’ emails for years. On November 24, 2014, and December 9, 2014, the State Department produced to the Select Committee approximately 25,000 pages of documents that had already been “previously produced to Congress.”
Some of these emails from Ambassador Stevens included:
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/10/20/worse-republicans-gop-busted-lying-access-emails.html
Republicans: the party that says it looks out for middle-class taxpayers. Uh huh. Sure. And Sarah Palin is an energy expert. Uh huh.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans: the party that says it looks out for middle-class taxpayers. Uh huh. Sure. And Sarah Palin is an energy expert. Uh huh.
ReplyDeleteHow many times can a dead horse be beaten? The more this goes on, the higher Hillary's numbers will go. Then there's curley and larry pissing over shemp and how safe he kept us.
ReplyDeleteIf her numbers keep going UP after these "interviews" they will eventually put 2 and 2 together and give some lame excuse and stop.
DeleteIf the entire reason is to sink her candidacy and it only benefits it, they will stop. Eventually. It may take them a while to figure out though. Then there will still be a few stick in the muds that haven't processed it yet.
His mammy drapped him right on the floor face first. Or else some alien mother ship dropped him off here for no good reason.
ReplyDeleteGowdy reminds me of the school teacher on South Park..
ReplyDelete