The Benghazi Committee's Out of Control Effort to Destroy Hillary Clinton at All Costs
The Benghazi Committee's Out of Control Effort to Destroy Hillary Clinton at All Costs
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The following is David Brock's Oct. 21, 2015 speech at the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia in advance of Secretary Hillary Clinton's testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Two years ago tomorrow, Media Matters published a book called The Benghazi Hoaxin which we exposed how Republicans had twisted the facts, invented charges out of thin air, and dishonored the memory of four brave Americans who died in Benghazi in their attempt to turn a national tragedy into a political weapon.
Last month, I published Killing the Messenger, a book whose subtitle is: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government. The centerpiece of the book is about the centerpiece of that plot: a partisan witch hunt that began with the despicable politicization of a terrorist attack on the United States and has since spiraled into a desperate fishing expedition and completely out of control effort to destroy Hillary Clinton at all costs.
Today, Secretary Clinton will testify before the Benghazi Select Committee, as she has been asking to do for months. She's been called not because of the committee's concerns about diplomatic security, but about her emails.
Clinton's use of a personal email account as Secretary of State followed the law and followed precedent. It has nothing to do with Benghazi, as the committee chairman himself has admitted.
But to Republicans, it doesn't matter. As I detail in Killing the Messenger, the Benghazi investigation was never about getting to the bottom of what actually happened. It was always a dirt-digging operation, a wild search for some hint of scandal that could stop Barack Obama from being re-elected, and, when that failed, stop Hillary Clinton from succeeding him.
And in the days that followed my book's release, Republicans started to finally admit it.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn't just acknowledge the Benghazi hoax, he boasted about it.
"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" he crowed. "But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping." The GOP's goal, McCarthy added in his mangled English, was to paint Clinton as "untrustable."
Then another Republican Congressman, Richard Hanna, confessed that the committee was "designed to go after" Hillary.
And last week, Republican officials told the New York Times that the committee began focusing on emails because Speaker of the House John Boehner thought it was "a way to keep the issue alive and to cause political problems for her campaign."
Meanwhile, a whistleblower emerged from within the committee staff: a former investigator, Air Force Reserve officer, and self-described conservative Republican named Bradley Podliska.
Major Podliska told CNN of the absurdity of life on the Benghazi committee. Staffers regularly wasted time online and sometimes drank on the job. Several joined a "gun buying club," whiling away the hours at the office designing personalized weapons -- "chrome-plated, monogrammed, Tiffany-style Glock 9-millimeters," to be exact.
He also reported that the committee "trained its sights almost exclusively on Clinton" following news reports on her emails. And he revealed that he had been fired for refusing to go along -- which would make his firing unlawful.
The committee responded by attacking Podliska as a "lousy employee" and divulging details of his employment -- which is also against the law, in this case the Congressional Accountability Act, which prohibited the committee from making public the details of the ongoing mediation surrounding Podliska's firing.
Indeed, this response was just the kind of thing you'd expect from a political war room, which is exactly what the Benghazi Select Committee is.
Last month, I published Killing the Messenger, a book whose subtitle is: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government. The centerpiece of the book is about the centerpiece of that plot: a partisan witch hunt that began with the despicable politicization of a terrorist attack on the United States and has since spiraled into a desperate fishing expedition and completely out of control effort to destroy Hillary Clinton at all costs.
Today, Secretary Clinton will testify before the Benghazi Select Committee, as she has been asking to do for months. She's been called not because of the committee's concerns about diplomatic security, but about her emails.
Clinton's use of a personal email account as Secretary of State followed the law and followed precedent. It has nothing to do with Benghazi, as the committee chairman himself has admitted.
But to Republicans, it doesn't matter. As I detail in Killing the Messenger, the Benghazi investigation was never about getting to the bottom of what actually happened. It was always a dirt-digging operation, a wild search for some hint of scandal that could stop Barack Obama from being re-elected, and, when that failed, stop Hillary Clinton from succeeding him.
And in the days that followed my book's release, Republicans started to finally admit it.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn't just acknowledge the Benghazi hoax, he boasted about it.
"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" he crowed. "But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping." The GOP's goal, McCarthy added in his mangled English, was to paint Clinton as "untrustable."
Then another Republican Congressman, Richard Hanna, confessed that the committee was "designed to go after" Hillary.
And last week, Republican officials told the New York Times that the committee began focusing on emails because Speaker of the House John Boehner thought it was "a way to keep the issue alive and to cause political problems for her campaign."
Meanwhile, a whistleblower emerged from within the committee staff: a former investigator, Air Force Reserve officer, and self-described conservative Republican named Bradley Podliska.
Major Podliska told CNN of the absurdity of life on the Benghazi committee. Staffers regularly wasted time online and sometimes drank on the job. Several joined a "gun buying club," whiling away the hours at the office designing personalized weapons -- "chrome-plated, monogrammed, Tiffany-style Glock 9-millimeters," to be exact.
He also reported that the committee "trained its sights almost exclusively on Clinton" following news reports on her emails. And he revealed that he had been fired for refusing to go along -- which would make his firing unlawful.
The committee responded by attacking Podliska as a "lousy employee" and divulging details of his employment -- which is also against the law, in this case the Congressional Accountability Act, which prohibited the committee from making public the details of the ongoing mediation surrounding Podliska's firing.
Indeed, this response was just the kind of thing you'd expect from a political war room, which is exactly what the Benghazi Select Committee is.
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