On Tuesday, Chairman Trey Gowdy of the Select
Committee on Benghazi announced that Republicans would cherry pick
through emails provided by witness Sydney Blumenthal (to Secretary
Hillary Clinton, but this isn’t political y’all!)
before making them public,
and of course yesterday’s testimony will be private. No doubt
misleading bits will be leaked to willing media outlets, but with no
context.
‘Cuz transparency.
On Wednesday, all five Democrats on the Select Committee on Benghazi sent a
letter objecting:
Yesterday, you issued a press release
announcing that you intend to publicly release emails that Sidney
Blumenthal provided to the Select Committee relating to Libya. Your
press release stated:
“Sidney Blumenthal produced to the Committee
nearly 60 new emails regarding Libya and Benghazi,” Gowdy said. “These
emails were not previously produced to the Committee or released to the
public, and they will help inform tomorrow’s deposition. We are
prepared to release these emails, but where practicable our internal
processes include consultation with the Ranking Member before release.
If Ranking Member Cummings consents, we will add to the former
Secretary’s public email record and release these shortly. If not, we
will do so after the required five days has passed.”
However, you did not consult—or even
contact—Ranking Member Cummings, other Democratic Select Committee
Members, or anyone on our staffs before issuing your press release. Nor
did you contact the State Department to clarify why its production of
Benghazi-related emails might have differences from Mr. Blumenthal’s
production of Libya-related documents.
As you know, we have always supported
transparency as part of this investigation. We called on you to release
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails after the Select
Committee obtained them in February, but you refused to do so. As you explained at the time:
“I am not going to make any emails public. We
have no idea whether this represents 10 percent of the document
production, 50 percent of the document production. We in the past have
not produced information selectively. In my judgment it runs counter to
a serious investigation to do so.”
You also highlighted
“the danger whenever you selectively release or leak information, is
you give a disproportionate amount of attention and importance to
whatever you’ve leaked.” Despite your previous statements on
this matter, your press release yesterday indicated that you now believe
it is appropriate to release selected emails from our investigation.
In response to your press release, Ranking Member Cummings agreed
to your proposal to release Mr. Blumenthal’s emails, provided that you
also release—at the same time—the full transcript of his day-long
deposition with the Select Committee. Rather than selectively leaking
only certain information about Mr. Blumenthal, the American people
deserve the benefit of Mr. Blumenthal’s responses to the hundreds of
questions that you and other Select Committee Members asked him,
including questions about these same emails. In response to the Ranking Member, you stated last night: “I need him to explain to me why this witness should be treated differently than any other witness.”
The fact of the matter is that you are the one treating Mr. Blumenthal differently. You are the one who ordered armed Marshals
to go to his home—without any debate or vote by the Committee—to serve a
subpoena compelling his testimony at yesterday’s deposition without
even contacting him first. You are the one who forced Mr. Blumenthal to
appear at a mandatory deposition—the only one the Select Committee has
held in the year since it was established—rather than a voluntary
transcribed interview like every individual before him. And you are the
one who is now proposing to release only Mr. Blumenthal’s emails when
you have not released emails from dozens of other individuals whose
documents the Select Committee has obtained.
Given your own words on this topic warning
against the selective release of information from the Committee’s
investigation, it has become impossible to understand your revolving
policy on when the Select Committee will release information and when it
will not. This type of incoherent policy inevitably leads to
criticisms that the investigation is motivated by a partisan political
attack against former Secretary Clinton rather than a neutral effort to
obtain the facts.
Obviously, the full transcript of Mr.
Blumenthal’s deposition will provide important background and context to
his emails. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to hold the
deposition in the first place. We would be happy to have our staffs
work together to review both the emails and the deposition transcript to
identify any content that we all agree should be redacted before public
release. In fact, we understand that you have already agreed to such a
practice with Mr. Blumenthal’s attorney regarding his emails, so the
same process could easily be used to review his deposition transcript.
If Republicans truly believe in transparency, then they should have no
objection to this course of action.
End letter.
Insert laughter here, because Democrats keep asking
for Republicans to be transparent in their alleged “transparency”
efforts, but Republicans like to keep their Benghazi investigations
under deep cover. They can’t afford to let the public see just how empty
is their Benghazi conspiracy tank.
Republican hypocrisy knows no bounds in its
desperation to find something to pin on the very popular former
Secretary Clinton, who beats all of their 2016 candidates with her hands
tied behind her back and while sleeping.
Remember when Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) reminded
Republicans that if they had any questions about fault regarding
Benghazi, they should buy themselves a mirror?
Oh yes. And then came the super secret meetings and
testimony by experts who actually know stuff, the full context of which
Republicans thought the public shouldn’t see. Republican Darrell Issa (R-CA) refused to let the co-chairs
of the Benghazi Review give their testimony in public, as they
requested, and tried to force Ambassador Thomas Pickering to testify
when the cameras were done rolling.
Republicans told the press that the co-chairs wouldn’t testify but the co-chairs wrote to Issa: “Recently,
you seem to have changed your position on our appearance, apparently
asking for a transcribed interview behind closed doors. In our view,
requiring such a closed-door proceeding before we testify publicly is an
inappropriate precondition.”
Democrats are at the eye-rolling stage with
Republicans. Republicans refuse to release Secretary Clinton’s emails or
let her testify immediately. And now they’re arguing the other side.
Sure the public is paying for this Republican 2016
political ad witch hunt, but Republicans don’t feel the public has a
right to know what is actually discovered with their tax money.
Republicans
keep saying their costly and far-fetched Benghazi obsession is all
about transparency. And yet, once again, they are refusing to show the
public the full transcript of a deposition. This is just like their
refusal to let cameras in so they could cherry pick testimony from
experts to further their Benghazi conspiracy.
