Boehner reported to OK House Select Committee on Benghazi with Trey Gowdy as chair
At last, we have a chance of getting to the bottom of who created the lie that Benghazi was a spontaneous demonstration motivated by a YouTube video almost nobody saw, who authorized the series of lies from Susan Rice, Jay Carney, and pothers, and what President Obama and then-Secretary of State were doing the night of September 11, 2012 as Amb. Stevens was being tortured and killed. Benghazigate truly has entered a new phase.
Multiple sources, including the Weekly Standard and the UK Daily Mail are reporting that Speaker Boehner is going forward with a vote to establish a House Select Committee headed by Rep. Trey Gowdy to investigate Benghazi.
Update. Here is Boehner's statement:
Americans learned this week that the Obama Administration is so intent on obstructing the truth about Benghazi that it is even willing to defy subpoenas issued by the standing committees of the People’s House. These revelations compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen. In light of these new developments, the House will vote to establish a new select committee to investigate the attack, provide the necessary accountability, and ensure justice is finally served.
The administration’s withholding of documents – emails showing greater White House involvement in misleading the American people – is a flagrant violation of trust and undermines the basic principles of oversight upon which our system of government is built. And it forces us to ask the question, what else about Benghazi is the Obama administration still hiding from the American people?
The House committees that have been investigating this attack have done extraordinary work, using their subpoena power, holding dozens of hearings, and conducting hundreds of interviews. Without this work we would not know much that we do today. But it’s clear that questions remain, and the administration still does not respect the authority of Congress to provide proper oversight. This dismissiveness and evasion requires us to elevate the investigation to a new level. I intend for this select committee to have robust authority, and I will expect it to work quickly to get answers for the American people and the families of the victims.
Four Americans died at the hands of terrorists nearly 20 months ago, and we are still missing answers, accountability, and justice. It’s time that change.
David Martosko of the Daily Mail writes:
[Angry Republicans are] launching a new investigative committee to dig further into the scandal, which erupted just weeks before President Obama's re-election. He insisted at the time that al-Qaeda was 'on the run,' but documents now confirm that the State Department knew immediately that it was a terror attack carried out by an al-Qaeda-affiliated group.
Two emails have emerged in the past 24 hours that suggest Obama administration officials knew immediately that the group, Ansar al-Shariah, laid waste to U.S. diplomatic facilities in the Eastern Libyan city.
But the president, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice and other officials told the public that the deadly attack was the result of a spontaneous anti-America protest sparked by an anti-Islam video.
The State Department has concealed both documents from the public.
One showed Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes setting up a conference call to coach Rice on emphasizing the video during TV interviews. That email was only made public on Wednesday because of a lawsuit from the center-right group Judicial Watch.
Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz released the other email Thursday night. Former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson first reported that it showed Assistant Secretary of State Beth Jones writing to senior officials within hours of the Benghazi attack to explain that she had told Libya's U.S. ambassador 'the group that conducted the attacks – Ansar Al Sharia – is affiliated with Islamic extremists.' (snip)
California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Kerry on Friday to demand his testimony, saying that the State Department has 'shown a disturbing disregard' for its 'legal obligations' to comply with congressional demands.
'Compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game,' Issa wrote.'The fact that these documents were withheld from Congress for more than 19 months is alarming. The Department is not entitled to delay responsive materials because it is embarrassing or implicates the roles and actions of senior officials.'
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy will reportedly chair the special 'select' committee, a bipartisan panel that will have broad subpoena power and the ability to interrogate witnesses at length.
Ordinary congressional committees typically allow members five minutes each for questions, a short enough time for witnesses to stall for time.
House Speaker John Boehner said Friday that the House will vote to establish the committee, a formality since his Republican conference is the controlling majority.
'Americans learned this week that the Obama Administration is so intent on obstructing the truth about Benghazi that it is even willing to defy subpoenas issued by the standing committees of the People's House,' Boehner said in a statement.
We already have outright lies and concealment of evidence, itself a major scandal and indicators of something worse being covered up. Trey Gowdy is a razor-sharp former prosecutor whose Southern accent can be disarming to smarmy types who assume anyone from the South is slow-witted. Let’s hope this bigotry afflicts many of the witnesses who will face Chairman Gowdy. They will live to regret it.
The faint odor of Watergate is getting stronger. Mainstream media, whose dominant instinct is to protect Obama, now face an uncomfortable choice: continue to sneer as evidence accumulates, or join Fox News (and now several others) in reporting the gory details.