Folks, this may just be bigger than previously thought. Yesterday, the news was that a conference of House Republicans found Hillary Clinton accountable for the lack of security in Benghazi prior to the attacks on 9/11/12 but the evidence presented in its report backs up the charge because it includes a document with her signature; that document conflicts with her January testimony.
The report released by a House Republican Conference, made up of five separate Chairmen from five separate Committees is definitely a positive step in that direction.
Those five are:
Buck McKeon - Armed Services
Ed Royce - Foreign Affairs
Bob Goodlatte - Judiciary
Darrell Issa - Oversight
Mike Rogers - Intelligence
The conference has just released its report on Benghazi and rests accountability right at the feet of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
One doesn't have to read past the second paragraph in the Executive Summary to find where the conference has found culpability:
Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including Secretary Clinton. This fact contradicts her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 23, 2013.
On the same day that Clinton testified in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she also testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During that testimony, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said that if he'd have been president when the Benghazi attacks happened, he would have fired Hillary. It would seem that the report backs up that position.
There are two more bullet points in the Executive Summary, one having to do with the administration altering the talking points in order to blame the anti-Muhammad video for the attacks, the other regarding claims that this one done to protect classified information.
On page two (referenced again on page seven), the conference points to a document with Clinton's signature on it:
Repeated requests for additional security were denied at the highest levels of the State Department. For example, an April 2012 State Department cable bearing Secretary Hillary Clinton’s signature acknowledged then-Ambassador Cretz’s formal request for additional security assets but ordered the withdrawal of security elements to proceed as planned.
It was also good to see the report include reference to a 'quick reaction force' that was relied upon to help defend the Consulate (Special Mission Compound) actually had sympathies with terrorists:
...the Benghazi Mission used local, unarmed guards, who were responsible for activating the alarm in the event of an attack, as well as four armed members of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, who were to serve as a quick reaction force. The February 17 Martyrs Brigade was one of the militias that fought for Gadhafi’s overthrow. Numerous reports have indicated that the Brigade had extremist connections, and it had been implicated in the kidnapping of American citizens as well as in the threats against U.S. military assets.
Let's take a look at what very well could be perjury on the part of Clinton during her testimony this past January. On page 10 of the report, the conference cites the April 19, 2012 document that Clinton signed, which discusses pulling back on security despite acknowledgment that a request for more security had been made, and juxtaposes it with her January 23, 2013 testimony:
“I have made it very clear that the security cables did not come to my attention or above the assistant secretary level where the ARB [Accountability Review Board] placed responsibility. Where, as I think Ambassador Pickering said, ‘the rubber hit the road.’”
And...
"...I was not aware of that going on, it was not brought to my attention…"
When it comes to the issue of perjury, the closest Hillary seemed to come was during her exchange with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), in which she claimed she had no idea - one way or the other - if there was any arms shipments to Turkey from American outposts in Benghazi. It would seem she should have at least known the answer to the question - yes or no.
These new revelations courtesy of the House Republican conference seem to not only point to perjury with respect to Clinton not knowing about the requests for additional security but also a smoking gun in the form of a document bearing her signature that put the lives of the four Americans who were murdered on 9/11/12 in more danger.
For some reason, this :35 second exchange Hillary had with Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is taking on increasingly added significance, very much in the spirit of 'thou doth protest too much':
There is a reason the Conference felt confident in resting accountability at Hillary's feet. That reason is far more newsworthy than the report that they did so.
In addition to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) continuing to call for a House Select Committee to investigate what happened in Benghazi on 9/11/12 - calls which John Boehner continues to ignore - he revealed something else noteworthy in this clip. There are still survivors of the attacks at Walter Reed six months later and we still know nothing about them.
Stonewall: to block, stall, or resist intentionally
In the game of cricket, the term stonewall means to:
play a defensive game, as by persistently blocking the ball instead of batting it for distance and runs.
When it comes to getting the truth about the 9/11 attacks in Benghazi that left four Americans dead, the Obama administration has lied - for two weeks, the administration blamed the attacks on a video - and it has stonewalled in the face of countless unanswered questions. In fact, when it became apparent that there were so many breakdowns on so many levels, Republicans from both Houses of Congress requested that select committees be formed.
In the Senate, Republicans are in the minority and Harry Reid has predictably stonewalled these requests because select committees that are formed to investigate scandals that could reach the president's office are much more effective than existent committees. Select committees would be made up of A-listers from various committees that would leverage their own individual areas of expertise. Reid is not going to put that kind of heat on a Democratic president.
Neither is Boehner; the Speaker of the House - a Republican - is stonewalling as well.
Check out what Boehner said last November, via Kerry Picket at Breitbart:
Both Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), along with other Democrats, rebuffed the idea of a joint select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack.
“At this point, I think that the standing committees of the House, whether they be the (State Department) oversight committee or the intelligence committee, are working diligently on these issues,” Boehner said shortly after his Senate colleagues floated the idea in November.
Some may see a bicameral committee (one that consists of both Representatives and Senators) as the best option, the absence of Senators does not preclude a select House committee from being formed. In fact, Rep. Frank Wolf wrote to Boehner in November and asked for that very thing. Boehner stonewalled the request then and is doing so now.
Writes Picket:
Speaker Boehner did not heed Wolf’s call for a select committee in the last Congress. In late January, Wolf refiled the resolution to establish a House Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attack. Boehner has yet to comment or act upon the resolution.
Breitbart News sent an inquiry to Speaker Boehner's office on Thursday afternoon that has gone unanswered.
When it comes to the details about what happened or didn't happen in Benghazi, the administration is preventing the truth from coming out. That is stonewalling. In Boehner's case, he is preventing the assembly of the best team possible to help reveal the truth. That too is stonewalling.
Are these two forms of stonewalling apples and oranges or are they distinctions without differences?
The answer is the latter. As the Speaker of the House - regardless of Party affiliation - Boehner should be spearheading any attempt to get to the truth about what happened on 9/11/12 in Benghazi. He is doing the opposite; he is doing what Harry Reid is doing.
John Boehner is stonewalling an investigation into Benghazi and when it comes to Boehner, this type of behavior is very predictable; he did the best he could to minimize the impact of the Fast and Furious investigation as well. That it went as far as it did is a testament to the likes of House Oversight Committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They pushed in spite of Boehner, not with his assistance. That was very clear.
In fact, Boehner scheduled the House vote on whether to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for not relinquishing documents subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee, on the same day that the Supreme Court rendered its Obamacare decision. As if that wasn't bad enough, on the day of the contempt vote, Obama did what Nixon did in Watergate; he asserted Executive Privilege to prevent the release of those documents.
Boehner protected the President. Period.
Some have suggested that the reason for doing so had to do with not wanting to harm Romney's chances in the 2012 election. Yeah? How'd that work out? The answer should be obvious. Romney lost the election and Republicans, in general, had their clocks cleaned because they chose not to fight. Fast and Furious is the quintessential example of something that warranted a high profile fight, if for no other reason than justice for the victims and their families, regardless of the election. Nonetheless, Boehner chose not to fight and his party lost big.
Benghazi is not all that dissimilar from Fast and Furious. Both involve guns (it's looking increasingly like Benghazi even involved gun running); both involved dead Americans; both involve an administration that is stonewalling the truth; and both apparently involve a House Speaker that prefers to sweep the carnage under the rug.
Imagine a House Select Committee that included members from the following Committees:
Appropriations
Armed Services
Budget
Foreign Affairs
Homeland Security
Judiciary
Oversight
Intelligence
Such a Committee would be formed to investigate the truth about Benghazi from every angle. It would include members who've demonstrated incredible political courage in the Fast and Furious investigation, chaired by the man who was at the tip of that spear:
Chairman: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) Members:
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL)
Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID)
Rep. Steve King (R-IA)
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI)
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI)
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)
Rep. Peter King (R-NY)
Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA)
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX)
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA)
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
There may be other Republicans worthy of consideration but the aforementioned list consists of those who have proven their mettle. As for Democrats, who cares? They'll be Obama's pawns. They can have whomever they like.
The Benghazi attack / coverup along with Fast and Furious are the Obama administration's two biggest scandals. Both involve dead Americans; one also involves hundreds of dead Mexicans. House Speaker John Boehner fought House Republicans at every turn when they wanted to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious. It was obvious to even the casual observer that Boehner wanted that story to go away.
The main objective of the Democratic Party is to win back the House in 2014. Benghazi is playing out in this election cycle in much the same way that Fast and Furious did in the last one. It could be argued that Republicans lost in 2012 - in large part - because Boehner and other Republican leaders chose not to fight for the truth in the gun-walking scandal. If the Democrats win the House in 2014, it could very well be because Boehner and other Republican leaders chose not to fight for the truth about Benghazi.
Apologies in advance for this long post but there are some extremely important developments taking place relative to Fast and Furious AFTER the contempt vote, despite House Leadership seemingly being a little too comfortable with closing the book on the scandal at this point. Keep in mind that the details in Fast and Furious are pointing to a mass murder scheme and some extremely powerful people are involved.
Conventional wisdom says that Fast and Furious ran its course when the House voted to find Eric Holder in contempt of Congress on both criminal and civil grounds. After all, Holder's subordinates are responsible for prosecuting him but as Deputy Attorney General James Cole - a man who's possibly more intimately involved with Fast and Furious than is his boss - wrote in a letter to John Boehner (h/t Fox News):
Across administrations of both political parties, the longstanding position of the Department of Justice has been and remains that we will not prosecuted an Executive Branch official under the contempt of Congress statute for withholding subpoenaed documents pursuant to a presidential assertion of executive privilege.
Boehner's potential desire to let this all end right there notwithstanding, Oversight Committee member, Rep. Trey Gowdy, explains that there are only three kinds of Executive Privilege and one doesn't even apply to Congress. The other two implicate either Obama or his immediate advisers directly in the Fast and Furious coverup, at minimum:
So, the President has implicated himself in the coverup of a mass murder plot by asserting Executive Privilege; Holder has committed perjury and is likely directing the coverup; and Holder's immediate subordinates are saying they won't prosecute Holder - who was essentially convicted of two serious crimes - because Obama asserted Executive Privilege. Boehner and Company could either throw up their hands and say, 'that's it, we've gone as far as we can go' or they can play hardball. Playing hardball doesn't seem to be in Boehner's DNA (see Washington Times link below) but there are members of the Oversight Committee, including Chairman Darrell Issa who appear to be swinging for the fences.
There have already been several developments that have taken place since the contempt vote that should cause continued interest in Fast and Furious. First among them is talk that Eric Holder can legally be arrested for being found in contempt of Congress.
Committee member, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) appeared on Fox News with Megyn Kelly and while responding to the aforementioned letter sent by James Cole, admitted that having the Sergeant at Arms arrest Eric Holder is an option that the House is not taking off the table, saying, "We're serious about this."
The Washington Times addressed the legality of arresting Holder as well:
Despite voting to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress, there’s little House Republicans can do in the short term to compel him to turn over documents — unless it wanted to revisit a long-dormant power and arrest him.
The thought is shocking, and conjures up a Hollywood-ready standoff scene between House police and the FBI agents who protect the attorney general. It’s a dramatic and unlikely possibility not least because Congress doesn’t even have a jail any longer. But in theory it could happen.
Republicans say it’s not even under consideration, with House Speaker John A. Boehner’s spokesman flatly ruling it out.
But the process, known as inherent contempt, is well-established by precedent, has been confirmed by multiple Supreme Court rulings, and is available to any Congress willing to force such a confrontation.
The second development involves Chairman Issa placing a letter he wrote to Ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) on May 24th, into the Congressional Record. That letter involved details of the wiretap applications that came into Issa's possession courtesy of a whistleblower (mole?) inside the Justice Department. Those wiretap applications were under seal and implicated high ranking DOJ officials in the authorizing of gun-walking. When Issa received them, it was a major flashpoint in this investigation. I received a link to a story from Issa's Communications Department via mass email yesterday that reports on this move by Issa.
In the midst of a fiery floor debate over contempt proceedings for Attorney General Eric Holder, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) quietly dropped a bombshell letter into the Congressional Record.
The May 24 letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member on the panel, quotes from and describes in detail a secret wiretap application that has become a point of debate in the GOP’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking probe.
The wiretap applications are under court seal, and releasing such information to the public would ordinarily be illegal. But Issa appears to be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause in the Constitution, which offers immunity for Congressional speech, especially on a chamber’s floor.
According to the letter, the wiretap applications contained a startling amount of detail about the operation, which would have tipped off anyone who read them closely about what tactics were being used.
Sipsey Street has actually transcribed the entire May 24th letter from Issa to Cummings that is now in the Congressional record and it is not only incredibly - and I mean INCREDIBLY - damaging to Holder and the Justice Department but it makes Elijah Cummings look like an absolutely despicable human being for not pursuing the investigation fully. Not only was Cummings one of the Congressional Black Caucus members who walked out during the vote to find Holder in contempt but on June 15, 2011 he looked the Brian Terry family in the eyes and said this:
It's important to point out that by putting his letter to Cummings in the Congressional Record, Issa not only took it public but he delivered an uppercut to the legacy of Cummings in so doing. These wiretap applications go into excruciating detail about how the Justice Department worked with the ATF to allow these guns to walk. If Cummings continues siding with Holder, historians will know exactly how wicked he was.
Additionally, remember, Issa has six wiretap applications in his possession, not just the one he referenced in his letter to Cummings. What's to say that Issa hasn't made it clear to Cummings that details about the other wiretap applications won't be placed into the public record in the future? Are they more damning than the one referenced in the May 24th letter? If so, Cummings knows it.
Future revelations courtesy of any whistleblower should not be discounted either. If that person on persons was able to get his / her hands on sealed wiretap applications, what else might be presented to Issa? The longer this goes on, the more damaging it will be to Cummings, who could just find himself the victim of a reverse-Alinsky tactic:
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
And, of course, Cummings is leading the charge to blame Bush for Operation Wide Receiver.
The third significant development is news that ATF whistleblowers John Dodson and Peter Forcelli have been placed directly under a supervisor - Scot Thomasson - who allegedly expressed a fervent desire for retaliation against those agents.
Check out this excerpt from a May 29th letter from Issa and Grassley to - you guessed it - The DOJ's Inspector General:
We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main wistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them.
...According to a direct eyewitness account, shortly after the allegations (of gun-walking) became public, he (Thomasson) stated: "We need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys [the whistleblowers] and take them down."...Thomasson was also allegedly heard to have said: "All these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f--k these guys." When asked if the whistleblower allegations were true, Thomasson purportedly said he didn't know and didn't care.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. There are indications that House Speaker John Boehner doesn't want to confront this issue head-on. Scheduling the contempt vote on the same day that SCOTUS ruled on Obamacare is one such example. If Boehner and Company want this to go away because they think it's a political loser for the presidential election, aren't they saying that the ends justify the means, with the means being no justice for the Terry family and continued whistleblower retaliation and the ends being electing Mitt Romney president?
Besides, if Boehner is not doing all he can to get justice, it implicates him in the coverup. There's simply too much evidence of wrongdoing at the highest levels of our government for him to have plausible deniability at this point.
Conservatives are supposed to stand for doing what's right; isn't it the left that believes ends justify means?
If House leaders (John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy) still want Fast and Furious to 'go away' at this point, it'd no longer be an issue of political cowardice or courage, or even calculation; it'd be about them being accomplices in the coverup of a murderous federal program.
No accusations here but when it comes to politicians - especially ones of the establishment / RINO persuasion - history is on the side of the skeptics. Besides, there's nothing wrong with a bit of preemptive accountability when it comes to holding said politicians accountable. Trusting them almost always gets you burned. So why do it now?
Consider a post by Mike Vanderboegh over at Sipsey Street about sources telling him that John Boehner, Mitt Romney, and the RNC (by extension) could be looking for ways to prevent the truth about Fast and Furious from coming out:
Said one source, "Romney wants this to go away, so the RNC wants it to go away, and they're putting more pressure on Boehner who never wanted to get this far down the road in the first place but he's been pushed along by Issa and the stand-up guys on his committee." He added, "The NRA making this a 'scored' vote means that if it comes to a vote, it will happen with as many as two or three dozen Democrats as well. The leadership now thinks that the only way for this to 'go away' like Romney wants is to short-circuit the vote."
Again, I'm not making the charge but if that last sentence is true and House leadership is doing anything to sabotage the vote, they would already be accomplices in the coverup. Not only that but it would mean the presumptive Republican nominee for president - as well as the RNC - would be party to the biggest political scandal in perhaps the history of the country, before even winning the general election.
Another interesting aspect to this comes courtesy of the Washington Post (h/t Sipsey Street). They imply that a possible reason for House leadership scheduling the contempt hearing on Thursday is to coincide with the expected Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare on the same day.
Republican leaders plan to bring the issue to the floor on Thursday, meaning lawmakers likely will vote on contempt charges on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to announce its ruling on the constitutionality of the 2010 health-care reform law.
The timing likely deprives advocates for contempt charges of the big headlines they might have received if the vote were held another day this week.
To his credit, when Boehner speaks publicly about Fast and Furious, his words are in support of getting to the bottom of the scandal. To his discredit, these concerns just keep rearing their heads. Maybe if he spoke a little more like Congressional freshman, Rep. Trey Gowdy and less like a politically guarded politician, that would stop.
As for Romney, he had a golden opportunity - when Obama announced amnesty for illegal aliens nearly two weeks ago - to point to Fast and Furious being a program that is responsible for hundreds of dead Mexicans. The implication would have been clear: If Obama cares so much about the welfare of Mexican nationals, why hasn't anyone been held accountable for a program that led to the deaths of hundreds of Mexican nationals.
Romney didn't do it and that is another example of why skeptics are, well, skeptical.
E-mail or call Speaker Boehner's office by clicking HERE.
E-mail or call the Romney campaign by clicking HERE.
**UPDATE**POLITICO has written that Issa has sent a letter to Barack Obama demanding answers about why he asserted Executive Privilege. Toward the end of the article, we have more anecdotal indicators that may lend more credence to the claim that House Leadership wants this to go away:
Unlike Issa’s last letter to the administration, this note didn’t contain the signatures of House GOP leadership.
The contempt motion is sure to pass, but House Republican leadership is not whipping their members. Speaking aboard Air Force One en route to New Hampshire, White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to say whether the administration was trying to keep Democrats in line.
Compare that behavior with that of Congressional Democrats in 2009 - 2010 when it came to ramming Obamacare through.
