House Benghazi Czar Trey Gowdy (R-SC)
Nobody could possibly have foreseen when Republicans set up a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack after all the previous investigations failed to yield a politically satisfactory result that it would turn into a
partisan fishing expedition trying to hurt Hillary Clinton.
Oh, wait. Everyone paying even a little attention could foresee that. And so it has developed. The committee's Democrats have sent its Republican chair, Rep. Trey Gowdy, a memo pointing out in detail how blatant the focus on Clinton, and the slow-walking to carry the investigation into 2016, has been:
At the beginning of this year, Select Committee Republicans provided Democrats with detailed information about their plans to hold 11 hearings between January and October on a wide range of topics relating to the Benghazi attacks. Since then, however, Republicans have completely abandoned this plan — holding no hearings at all since January and instead focusing on former Secretary Hillary Clinton. Amazingly, the last eight press releases on the Select Committee's webpage deal entirely with Secretary Clinton.
The letter lists 11 hearings planned for 2015, nine of them planned for January through July—but can point to only one hearing that has been held so far this year. "In the entire 14 months since the Select Committee has been in existence," the letter damningly notes, it "has not conducted a single transcribed interview or deposition of even a single Defense Department employee," and it waited until April to request new documents from the CIA.
In the past, Republicans have attempted to blame the Select Committee’s glacial pace on Secretary Clinton and the State Department. But it seems difficult to understand how they could be responsible for the Select Committee abandoning every single hearing it had planned to hold since January.
Difficult to understand if you're not a Republican, maybe. Republicans know that Hillary Clinton is responsible for everything bad in the world, including their own failures to request documents, hold hearings, and interview people. And they're determined to go through whatever contortions necessary to make Benghazi a major issue in the 2016 election. It worked so well for them in 2012, after all.