Via
TPM's Sahil Kapur, an aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she is "leaning towards" naming Democrats to the GOP's newly-created #Benghazi investigation panel:
"No decision has been made, but Pelosi is now leaning toward appointing a full complement of Members to the Select Committee on Benghazi," the aide said in an email. "She huddled with leadership at 10 a.m. this morning and will likely hold an additional meeting with leadership this afternoon to update them on negotiations with the Speaker’s office."
The aide, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record, added: "Talks between Pelosi and [Speaker John] Boehner staff continue this morning on remaining items Democrats are asking for to ensure fairness, transparency and balance with respect to the committee’s proceedings and operations."
This smells like a trial balloon to gauge whether there will be backlash for participating in the panel. Naming members is certainly the more cautious approach than boycotting it entirely, and in theory preserves the option of a Democratic walkout at a later date, though that seems unlikely to happen if they do indeed name members to the panel.
My $0.02 is that the most important thing is that if Democrats do participate, that they don't pull punches in the name of comity—when Republicans put tin foil hats on, Democrats need to call their colleagues out. Otherwise, there's no point in participating.
And while I'd file this under the category of wishful thinking, now that we've learned the #Benghazi committee will have full access to the records of other committees that investigated #Benghazi, I do like the idea of Democrats exploring political communications that Republicans may have had on the subject. Because that would actually be something interesting and newsworthy.