The House Republicans have finally released their big Benghazi report, and it contains … not much that’s going to make real news. Which we know from the timing—if they thought they could really damage Hillary Clinton with it, the report would have been released a lot closer to the election. Politico, never over-cautious about hyping a story, reports that while the report contains some details that hadn’t come out in the previous investigations:
Still, the report's findings are unlikely to change the political narratives surrounding the attack.
The Republican efforts to make Benghazi a major election-year issue were hampered both by the lack of a there there and by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who gave away the game last fall when he said:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.
Then Hillary Clinton showed up for a marathon public hearing at which she more than held her own, and in the end, the Republican committee members were left touting bombshells like:
Minutes before the President delivered his speech in the Rose Garden, Jake Sullivan wrote in an email to Ben Rhodes and others: “There was not really much violence in Egypt. And we are not saying that the violence in Libya erupted ‘over inflammatory videos.’”
Ooh. Yeah, that’ll really shape public opinion.
Two of the committee’s Republicans, Jim Jordan and Mike Pompeo, were so unhappy about its lack of gaudy attacks on Clinton that they issued an addendum to make up for the lack.