Benghazi committee chair Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)
The super-special House select committee investigating #Benghazi has been something of a fizzle, with
little to show despite (or because of?) the several investigations that preceded it. Now the select committee
might lose the bipartisan cover of Democratic participation—in part because, Democrats charge, Republicans have been excluding them from the committee's work, and in part because the committee's work is predictably witchhunty:
At issue are two complaints from committee Democrats. The first is that they have been systematically excluded from at least five witness interviews, and only discovered that Republicans had conducted those interviews after the fact through press reports. The second complaint is the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), is downplaying or disregarding interview testimony that contradicts assumptions about the night of the attacks.
The complaints, laid out in a letter from the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), come as the committee is to hold a public hearing Tuesday on the status of records requests related to the attacks. One of the Democrats on the committee, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), told CQ Roll Call in an interview that it might be time for Democrats to consider leaving the committee altogether.
Republicans are Very Annoyed that Democrats would dare go public with their concerns rather than continuing to lend their names to a partisan search for ways to do damage while being excluded from the actual investigating.
“[T]hat the Democrats have released correspondence that attempts to politically characterize sources’ private discussions with the committee without proper context goes to the exact heart of why the Chairman will not require sources to talk to both sides,” Jamal D. Ware, the committee communications director, said in a statement.
Ah, yes. "We can't allow Democrats to talk to sources because they might point out that we are dishonest."
Don't those silly Democrats know that their place is to sit by quietly, putting their names on the select committee to make it look like something other than a Republican farce, but not actually doing anything? The fact that Democrats think their voices could possibly matter is why Republicans can't have nice things, I guess.