On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House blocked a Democratic effort to abolish the Select Committee on Benghazi, which has been conducting an investigation into the 2012 attack on an American compound in Benghazi, Libya, during Hillary Clinton’s reign as secretary of state. While the Democrats fully expected the resolution to fail, it served as a procedural effort to force House Republicans to publicly support maintaining the Benghazi Committee, NBC News reports.
Representative Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) moved forward on Wednesday with a “privileged resolution” to disband the Benghazi panel just one day after another effort to dismantle the panel failed in the House Rules Committee. Slaughter’s resolution specifically referenced comments made by Representative Kevin McCarthy (shown, R-Calif.) regarding the committee’s effect on Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers.
Last week, Representative McCarthy committed a major blunder during an appearance on Fox News by implying that the Benghazi committee was politically motivated.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee,” he said. “What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought.”
McCarthy has since made efforts to clarify his statements.
“Let’s be very clear: Benghazi is not political,” McCarthy said. “It was created for one purpose and one purpose only: to find the truth on behalf of the families of the four dead Americans. Period…. The integrity of [committee chairman Rep.] Trey Gowdy, the integrity of the work that has been done has never come into question and it never should be. Stop playing politics,” he added.
But Democrats have seized upon his comments as evidence of claims they have made virtually since the panel’s creation.
In Slaughter’s resolution, she says that McCarthy’s comments “called into question the integrity of the proceedings” of the committee and demonstrate “that the Select Committee established by Republican leaders in the House of Representatives was created to influence public opinion of a presidential candidate.”
The resolution reads:
-Whereas a widely-quoted statement made on September 29th, 2015 by Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Leader of the House of Representatives, has called into question the integrity of the proceedings of the Select Committee and the House of Representatives as a whole;
-Whereas this statement by Representative McCarthy demonstrates that the Select Committee established by Republican leaders in the House of Representatives was created to influence public opinion of a presidential candidate….
“It’s clear the majority has used the Select Committee on Benghazi to politicize a tragedy,” Slaughter said, adding that the panel “is a clear and undeniable abuse of official staff time, resources and attention. It undermines the work of the House, and it misleads the American public.” She called for the panel to be “dismantled” and for all unclassified interviews and depositions to be made public within 30 days.
Republicans insist that the Benghazi committee was formed to determine what really happened in Benghazi that led to the death of four Americans, and whether the diplomatic compound was unprepared for what was discovered to be an orchestrated terrorist attack. The panel is set to release its final report in 2016.
McCarthy’s gaffe has compelled some of his Republican colleagues to question whether he would be a viable replacement for House Speaker John Boehner, who will be resigning from the House on October 30.
Boehner has come to McCarthy’s defense, however, and asserts that the panel is a valuable tool to get the facts about Benghazi.
“There is not one American who, in the course of our lifetime, wouldn’t rather have the opportunity to say words over again. Not one. There is not one American who hasn’t had this experience,” Boehner said.
“The Benghazi committee is about what happened before, during and after a terrorist attack in Libya, where four Americans died,” he continued. “The American people deserve the truth about what happened. Period.”
Slaughter’s resolution is just one of several Democrat-led efforts to paint the Benghazi investigation as merely a politically motivated effort by Republicans.
On Tuesday, Representative Slaughter sought a vote on a floor amendment to kill the panel, but the move was blocked by the Republican majority on the House Rules Committee. Slaughter attempted to tack the amendment on a Republican bill to create a new Select Committee on Planned Parenthood to investigate revelations made in a series of undercover videos about the abortion giant’s involvement in fetal organ harvesting.
Representative Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) also filed an ethics complaint against McCarthy, accusing him of using taxpayer dollars to launch a political campaign against Clinton.
The complaint accuses McCarthy and the Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) of violating “federal law and House rules by using funds appropriated to the Select Committee on Benghazi to oppose the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton,” according to the filing. “This is a clear and unequivocal misuse of appropriated funds for political purposes,” the document reads. CNN notes that the complaint asks the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate just Gowdy and McCarthy, not the committee.
The Washington Post observes that the efforts are strategically intended to “weaken the panel ahead of testimony from Hillary Clinton on Oct. 22.” This could serve to distract people from last month’s revelations that the State Department discovered a number of Clinton’s e-mails related to the 2012 violence in Libya that were not turned over to the committee earlier in the year as requested.
Meanwhile, the Clinton camp has launched an ad that focuses on McCarthy’s comments in an attempt to paint Hillary as a victim of the GOP’s taxpayer-funded agenda.
Photo: AP Images
