Benghazi Committee Chair Trey Gowdy and ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings
The Benghazi Committee's big show is over, and Republicans made it clearer than ever that their interest is not in investigating what happened in Benghazi but in damaging Hillary Clinton. With Republicans having
tried and failed to make Clinton snap or otherwise publicly humiliate her, what's left for Democrats to do on the committee?
Democrats have said they agreed to join the committee to be in the room and know what Republicans are up to, and clearly on Thursday, they at times provided more aggressive pushback to Republican efforts at prosecuting Clinton than Clinton herself could engage in. But broadly speaking, we know what Republicans are up to. We know that Democrats won't be able to get key documents made public, as Republicans will block any efforts at transparency. So far, Democrats aren't saying what they plan to do:
Pelosi has insisted, as she reiterated Thursday, "You have to be in the room to defend the truth." With Clinton's testimony concluded, that decision is likely to be revisited. Senior Democratic aides would not rule out the possibility of Democrats boycotting the panel, whose work likely will stretch into the election year.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee's top Democrat,, said no decision has been made on whether Democrats boycott investigation.
If they quit, their reasons won't be hard to understand. A
New York Times editorial flays the hearing as a "pointless grilling" in which "In a flailing performance, the committee’s chairman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, made it evident that he and his colleagues have squandered more than $4.6 million and countless hours." The
Times—which has in the recent past been only too willing to seize on misleading leaks coming from the committee's Republicans—didn't stop at criticism. It called for action by the committee's Democrats:
Now that the hearing, which was intended to be the climactic point of the Benghazi committee inquiry, is over, the Democrats who reluctantly agreed to join the panel when it was established in May 2014 should walk away. The Republicans are expected to issue a report. May it be the final chapter of a wasteful and counterproductive exercise that accomplished nothing.
The Benghazi Committee is broadly discredited—has discredited itself. Its Democrats have done valuable work pointing out the Republicans' partisan tells, but their work here just may be done.