Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid announced that Senate Democrats
have sent a letter to the Republican National Committee demanding that
the RNC pay the taxpayers back for their Benghazi investigation.
Reid called the panel a hit job on Hillary Clinton, “Former First
Lady, United States Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will
testify before the so-called Benghazi Select Committee tomorrow. In
recent weeks, it has become absolutely clear that this committee is
nothing more than a political hit job on Hillary Clinton.”
On the Senate floor, Democratic Senate Leader Sen. Harry Reid summed up what this “investigation” has accomplished:
– Republicans have spent $4.7 million of taxpayer money to attack Secretary Clinton.
– Republicans have done little to investigate the Benghazi attacks.
– And what little work House Republicans actually did reconfirmed the basic findings of all of the previous investigations.
House Republicans have used the tragic deaths of four innocent
Americans and turned it into an appalling political farce. The very
notion that an official House Committee was used as a political tool is
inexcusable. It is even more disgraceful that nearly $5 million taxpayer
dollars were spent on this political hit job.
Senate Democrats will continue to fight to get this sham of a
committee disbanded. Weeks ago we sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner
urging him to bring this disgraceful committee to an end. Today, Senate
Democrats have sent a second letter to the Republican National
Committee, requesting that it reimburse the American people for the
Benghazi Committee’s expenses. That seems only fair since the so-called
committee is clearly a Republican political organization.
Senate Democrats aren’t standing on the sidelines. They are demanding
that the Republican National Committee pay the taxpayers back the
millions of dollars that they have used for their political
investigation of Clinton.
Getting the money back is not enough. The best thing that could
happen would be for the political leaders to hear the calls of millions
of Americans and launch an independent investigation into the illegal
use of taxpayer funds for partisan political purposes by House
Republicans.
I suspect that after Hillary Clinton knocks down the eight-hour
spectacle of staged political theater that Republicans are planning, the
House Select Committee on Benghazi will go off into a corner and die a
slow political death.
Republicans need to be held accountable, and nothing less than a
criminal investigation is enough. The House Republican abuse of power
must stop.
