When I finally decided to look at the Benghazi and IRS issues, I quickly tired of the accusations, justifications, misrepresentations and misinformation that inevitably accompany these investigations. However, my interest was piqued by Darrell Issa.
It was the day the media reported him cutting off Elijah Cummings’ mic, twice, while repeatedly using the hand-across-the-throat gesture. I decided then to have a closer look at Darrell Issa.
His background was revealing and included criminal allegations for grand theft auto and arson with one concealed weapon conviction. For a detailed summary, read Welcome to the Darrell Issa Hall of Shame by Jon Per.
He became politically active in the mid 1990s and won his first term in the House in 2000. From the first he was forceful and combative, earning the nickname “Bush’s attack dog”. Following the 2010 election when Republicans gained the House majority, Issa swore that he was the man to get something on Obama that could impeach him. The party believed him and Boehner gave him the chairmanship of the House Oversight Committee in 2011.
This was Issa’s big chance and he revelled in it. He was convinced that he alone could bring down the Obama Administration and he tackled the task with obsessive zeal.
Also on Issa’s committee from 2011 was one Trey Gowdy. A former prosecutor and ultra conservative, Gowdy was also ambitious and zealous. How much notice Issa took of Gowdy isn’t known but it’s reasonable to speculate that it wasn’t nearly enough. He certainly missed any and all signs of the usurpation that was to come.
Meanwhile, Issa believed his best chances of getting Obama were through either the IRS or Benghazi and he pursued both investigations into 2014. Like the proverbial political tide, media attention on both ebbed and flowed then turned on Issa himself.
Criticism for his behaviour towards Cummings resulted in an Issa apology in order to avoid disciplinary action which may have resulted in his losing the chairmanship, not a position he was prepared to give up. He’d already asked Boehner to renew his chairmanship in the 114th Congress and knew Boehner was reluctant.
The House Republicans’ confidence in Issa was fast waning in the face of repeated failures to live up to his promise to get Obama. The IRS investigation had dwindled down into a Contempt of Congress vote for a regional employee and the Benghazi investigation was fast running out of viable witnesses.
Then Issa received a reprieve. The Repeal Obamacare! election tactic had received multiple blows from good sign-up figures and a high rate of paid premiums. The Republicans were desperate for a new front page issue and they landed on Benghazi.
But there was a catch: they didn’t want the old Benghazi with Issa’s record of failures attached to it; they wanted a new Benghazi, a new select committee, a new chairman, announced with all the fanfare of full-color graphics on Boehner’s Twitter account.
Enter Trey Gowdy.
Dazzled by this turn of events, no-one in the media asked how Boehner came to choose him – but they should have. There had to be a lot of talk going on behind Issa's back with Gowdy being tattletale-in-chief, bending Boehner’s ear at every opportunity.
It would have started when confidence in Issa’s ability began to be questioned, no doubt aided and abetted by Gowdy who would have accumulated plenty of material in committee meetings then put his own spin on it without anyone to contradict him - it’s safe to assume Issa never knew what was going on.
When this new select committee was announced, Gowdy stepped into the spotlight and everyone ignored Darrell Issa - no-one give a moment's thought to his reaction. Here's this ego-driven, belligerent, spotlight-loving chairman of his own high profile committee being publicly humiliated by the Speaker and side-lined in the wake of a newer, shinier committee yet no-one wondered what he was thinking and, more pertinently, what he might do.
When Boehner announced the new select committee with Gowdy as chairman, he was condemning Issa to the shadows and Issa knew it. Anyone with an ounce of sense and a moment's thought would have known it. Yet there was nothing from the media. Did they really think that Issa would just sit back and take it? I don’t believe they gave him any thought at all and that in itself would have rankled Issa. He had to have realized what Gowdy had done behind his back and he would have seen it as no less than an act of betrayal and usurpation of Issa’s position in the party.
Score: Issa 0; Gowdy 1
Given Issa’s pathological character, he would immediately have begun plotting his revenge; his ego would have permitted no less. On the day of the official announcement, Issa issued a subpoena to Secretary Kerry. Everybody immediately launched into a debate of what Issa thought Kerry could contribute to the investigation and missed entirely the obvious reason – this was issa’s opening shot at Gowdy; the battle of the two committees had begun in earnest.
Score: Issa 1; Gowdy 1
Next, Issa deliberately revealed the existence of a particular email. From Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins:
[T]he post-modern Richelieu, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), on the eve of the new Benghazi Select Committee getting up and rolling, ...went ahead and tipped everyone to the existence of a "still-classified State Department email," indicating that "one of the first responses from the White House to the Benghazi attack was to contact YouTube to warn of the 'ramifications' of allowing" the infamous "Innocence of Muslims" video to remain on the site. All of which means that before the CIA starting crafting talking points about the attack, the White House was (and not without good reason -- there had been numerous angry clashes across the Muslim world over that video) taking the proactive, base-covering step to mitigate further damage done by the "Innocence of Muslims" clip.
Of course Issa was out to undermine Gowdy by revealing the existence of this "still-classified State Department email". From Brian Beutler at the New Republic (emphasis mine):
The White House is thrilled with this revelation because it supports the view that their early citations of the YouTube video were sincere -- not intended to whitewash the truth, that American public servants had been victims of a terrorist attack. The claim that this YouTube business was all a big lie is central to the entire convoluted Benghazi conspiracy, and something Select Committee chairman Trey Gowdy has harped upon in the past. Issa's leak supports the opposite conclusion.
Score: Issa 2; Gowdy 1
A lull followed but not because of any peace talks or treaty; both were marshalling their forces and determining tactics. Gowdy was stalled while Democrats debated whether or not to join his committee and Issa cancelled the subpoena while Kerry’s staff determined when scheduling would allow him time to appear at a hearing.
However, Issa must have grown impatient in the lull because he then re-issued the subpoena to Kerry, probably thinking that he could get in another shot at Gowdy while the select committee waited on the Democrats.
Then a flurry of activity. Pelosi announced they would provide the full five members allowed and Kerry’s staff advised that the Secretary of State would appear at Issa’s hearing but only at Issa’s hearing. Issa must have been elated – what a coup!
Score: Issa 3; Gowdy 1
But Gowdy was now in full fighting mode. Though unreported, I am confident that he again went to Boehner to complain how unfair it was that Issa was getting Kerry and not him. No doubt he pointed out that the select committee was Boehner’s idea and Issa was undermining it. So Boehner went to Issa and issued an order: release Kerry from his commitment and relinquish all Benghazi investigations to the select committee.
Issa must have been devastated. Certainly his statement to the media was begrudging and befuddled. "It’s been disappointing to watch a long serving former senator, like Secretary Kerry, squirm his way to what I’m doing today — releasing him from the upcoming hearing commitment he made only after we issued him a subpoena," Issa said.
Say what? How could Kerry have been “squirm”ing out of anything by agreeing to appear before Issa’s committee? Obviously Issa was upset and logic had deserted him for not only had he lost his prize witness but he’d lost Benghazi too — Gowdy, through Boehner, had out-maneuvered him and stolen the entire investigation from his grasp.
Score: Issa 1; Gowdy 2
Don't expect Issa's ego to just lie down and take it. Earlier in the week Cummings said Issa is "going rogue".
“I actually believe that Chairman Issa is out of control, I really believe that,” Cummings said in an interview. I don’t doubt his judgement.
What Issa does next is anybody’s guess but, whatever it is, you can be sure it will be borne out of frustration and searing anger — and he's running out of time.