Hillary’s Faux Benghazi Anger

It looks like Hillary’s email scandal is finally getting the best of her and her campaign.  While she has tried to laugh the matter off in the past, it seems as though Hillary’s email situation has become serious enough that her advisors have recommended she shift course and play the Four Dead Americans anger card in an effort to save her run for the White House.

Taking advantage of the gaffe House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made last week, Hillary supporters and her campaign staff have moved the discussion as far away from the email scandal that surrounds the former Secretary of State as possible.  Instead of the email scandal, they have turned the focus to Benghazi, a topic of which they have vehemently avoided, for the past three years.  The poorly worded comment, made by Representative McCarthy, created an opportunity for Democrats and they pounced on it.  McCarthy’s comment, which was intended to stress the point that it was the result of, not the reason for, the investigative work of the Select Committee on Benghazi that Hillary’s email indiscretions have surfaced.

Democrats assuredly are aware that how McCarthy’s comment came out was little more than a wording gaffe but in a desperate effort to save their golden girl from a second loss at a run for the presidency, they have twisted the gaffe into what they are pushing in the media as an admission of guilt.  Democrats claim that McCarthy’s statement makes it clear that the sole purpose of Select Committee was to dethrone Queen Hillary.  There is one problem with this accusation however, it does not fit the most fundamental interpretation of facts.

Unless Democrats wish to go on record and claim that the Benghazi tragedy was some kind of sick and twisted Republican conspiracy crafted for the sole purpose of taking down Hillary, the attack can be attributed to nothing more than a failure of US foreign policy.  Stemming from the attack however, was a single event that raised a simple question by those whose task it is to conduct oversight on all such incidents.  A press brief, released by Secretary Clinton, which blamed the attack on an internet video set the wheels in motion which eventually led to the unexpected discovery of a private Clinton email address and server.

The attack on US assets in Benghazi could not have come at a worst time politically for President Obama, whose foreign policy was coming under heavy attack by Republicans and specifically Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney.  And so, it is fair to speculate that when no viable explanation could be provided as to why Secretary Clinton blamed that attack on an internet video, an account that contradicted reports coming directly from the ground, the claim could be viewed as being politically motivated. 

Speculation of political motivation only increased after Hillary Clinton’s surrogate, U.N. Ambassador for the United States Susan Rice, was sent out the following Sunday to five times repeat a prepared set of talking points in an attempt to sell the narrative that the attack was spurred by a group of angry protestors said to be fueled by an internet video.  But now, several days after the incident, we knew a little more about the situation on the ground including the fact that just prior to the attack there were no protestors outside the US Consulate, as reported by Ambassador Stevens himself.


It’s Time To Put the Oversight Investigations Lie to Bed

Maybe the most misunderstood activity performed by the US Congress is congressional oversight.  There are a number of House and Senate committees and subcommittees, each with their own oversight responsibilities.  And as was the case with the Benghazi attack, several oversight committee responsibilities were involved therefor, by default, prompting a large number of targeted investigations.  It must be understood that each oversight committee has a well defined scope of responsibilities and while there may be some overlap in the investigative process, each committee reports only on its specific area of responsibility such as the intelligence community, the Department of Defense, the State Department etc.

In regards to Benghazi, three of the four completed congressional oversight investigations noted in their final report that while it was not in their purview to investigate the State Department, their investigation did require that they request documents from the State Department.  Each of these committees clearly stated in their final report that they received little or no cooperation from the State Department in fulfilling their requests.  A forth congressional oversight committee closed its investigation without conclusion, reporting that due to a complete lack of cooperation from the State Department, to turn over requested documents, became impossible to achieve its oversight goals.

So the narrative repeatedly put forth by Democrats that numerous oversight investigations have found no wrong doing is completely false.  Congressional Democrats, and senior members of the Obama Administration are willfully misleading the American people with their false narrative of the various investigations.  You can find a more detailed explanation to the purpose and findings of each of the Benghazi oversight investigations in my blog titled Congressional Oversight DoesNot Give State Department a Free Pass on Benghazi.


How Did This Become About Hillary?

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was the fifth and most aggressive of all the investigative committees in trying to get to the who, what, why, where and when answers in a broader scope of the Benghazi attack.  It was this committee that came up against the greatest amount of stonewalling, pushback and obstruction, not just from the State Department but from committee Democrats as well.  Public hearings were a sham and the State Department absolutely refused to comply with countless document requests.  It was clear that there was no way that requested information was ever going to be obtained from the State Department using the very limited number of tools available to the oversight committee.  The State Department was simply going to stonewall the committee into submission and the Department of Justice and Executive Branch were not going to intervene.

But that all changed in May of 2014, when the House of Representatives approved the formation of the Select Committee on Benghazi.  The reason for this new committee was to untie the hands of those investigating the events surrounding the Benghazi attack. The Select committee has significantly more investigative tools at its disposal and far fewer restrictions than congressional oversight.  It was through the use of these enhanced capabilities that the Select Committee hoped it could break the investigative stalemate between the State Department and the investigative body, and it worked!

For the first time the State Department was made to answer as to why they were not cooperating with document request and as the investigation pressed on, more was learned about how obstructive the State Department had been and continues to be.  It was not without the help of watchdog groups, such as Judicial Watch, that progress was finally being made in obtaining massive amounts of missing documents pertaining to Benghazi, documents which had repeatedly been requested over the prior two years.  And as a result of the persistence of the Select Committee, and the added legal pressure created by these watch dog groups that the Clinton email scandal surfaced.  The State Department was ultimately forced to release long awaited documents which lead to the Clinton private email account and email server discovery.  Now it was clear as to why the State Department had been withholding the release of documents pertaining to Benghazi.


So What’s With the Faux Anger Hillary?

A full two years after the Benghazi attack and a year and a half after Hillary Clinton left the State Department was it first learned by the Select Committee that the former Secretary held full possession of her email record as Secretary of State.  And shortly after this discovery it was learned the she housed those personal emails on a private home brewed server.  Since these discoveries, Hillary Clinton has been under constant scrutiny as her email scandal grows larger almost daily. 

Clearly the discovery of Hillary Clinton’s private email and server was not the result of a partisan witch hunt intended to take the former Secretary down as Democrats are wanting us all to believe.  The focus of the Select Committee has been to obtain the facts and answer the long pending list of unanswered questions, the objective has never changed.  And the Select Committee has made major headway in doing so, having recovered some 50,000 formerly unreleased documents pertaining to Benghazi, only a fraction of which have any ties to Hillary Clinton.  As well, the Chairman just advised that his committee has interviewed more than 40 new witnesses all of which had never before been interviewed by any of the past Benghazi committees.

Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, the Select Committee, nor any of the other oversight committees related to Benghazi for that matter, was formulated to target and destroy Hillary’s political aspirations.  Hillary Clinton’s name is rarely even mentioned by the likes of Trey Gowdy, other than when Hillary or Democrats running cover for her happen to bring her name up.  

Hillary is in trouble at her on accord.  She can direct her anger at anyone or anything she wishes but at the end of the day it has been her actions and her actions alone which have put her in the situation she is in, a situation that is not only killing her political aspiration of being the first woman to serve as President of the United State but also may help her find her way in front of a Federal Judge or worse.

And to think, this all stemmed from a single lie Hillary told about an internet video!

We Have Lost Sight as to the True Importance of Hillary’s Emails

This whole “classified email” mess that Hillary has gotten herself in to is entertaining enough and of course quite serious but it has for some time now monopolized the news cycle and taken our sights away from what got us here in the first place.

This all started back on September 11, 2012 at 10:07pm EST when, just after getting off of the phone with President Obama, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a press brief stating that the attack on the US Consulate was spurred by an internet video.  The attack was still underway at the time of this press brief release and intelligence was still being gathered however, word on the ground that the Secretary had received indicated that it was an organized attack.   It is also important to note the phone call exchange between the President and the Secretary was originally buried but later revealed, on accident, through a slip of the tongue by then White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.  The Secretary had previously been questioned as to if she had spoken with the President during that attack and her answer was no.

The story as to what happened that night in Benghazi has spiraled out of control from that point forward.  Hillary’s blaming the attack on an internet video came under immediate attack and rightly so.  Nobody could provide anyone with an explanation as to what lead the State Dept. to believe the video was the case and nobody was talking. The circumstances surrounding the press brief (the secret phone call shared with the president moments before) would not be learned until sometime later and again, only because of a slip of the tongue by Jay Carney.

The Sunday following the Benghazi tragedy was the definitive moment/day as Susan Rice made the rounds on all the Sunday morning news shows repeating a highly scripted set of talking points that backed the internet video claim.  The story simply did not add up and left many scratching their heads and wondering what really happened.

As is always is the case with any such tragedy, congressional oversight automatically kicks in and does its part by investigating the actions and activities of the various agencies to which they are responsible for.  Congressional oversight had their hands full on the Benghazi investigations however, as pieces were not fitting right from the beginning.  There were conflicts in reporting, conflicts in statements and most of all the blaming of the internet video and subsequent Sunday morning news show rounds by Susan Rice doing so just did not fit.


Let the Feet Dragging and Obstructionism Began

Some of the very first documents requested by congressional oversight were the string of emails that were used to craft the talking points used by Susan Rice that Sunday morning.  Oversight got the run around and in fact it took a letter directly to the President, and signed by a number of the oversight chairpersons to finally get this string of emails released.

The final release of these emails created more questions than answers which led to the eventual request for ANY AND ALL DOCUMENTS, from the State Department pertaining to Benghazi to be released to congressional oversight.  This request took place while Hillary was still in office and was never complied with.

The failure of the State Department to release requested documents is well documented in several of the oversightcommittees final reports on Benghazi and it is this failure, on the part of the State Department, to turn over Benghazi related documents that prompted the formulation of the Select Committee on Benghazi, a committee that has more tools in its bag to force parties and departments to comply than the standard congressional oversight committees do.  But even at that, this committee is at the mercy of the DOJ if legal action that would lead to some type of enforcement or criminal investigation were needed, such actions are outside the authority of the Select Committee.   But I digress.

Hillary’s emails became an issue when, from the few documents they were able to pry from the State Department, congressional oversight discovered that there were no emails addressed to or from Hillary Clinton.  Of course members of the committee were looking for a { .gov} email address at the time but her personal email address was not surfacing either.  But eventually a few documents passed through the hands of the oversight committee and the discovery was made that Hillary was using a private email account.  Now the State Department had no choice but to compel Hillary to turn over her email record, which up until that point she had sole custody of.


So here we are Today

While the talking point of “classified emails” on Hillary’s server is consuming all the news room discussions, the real reason we are here and digging into Hillary’s emails is because of Benghazi.

Hillary and her team have done an excellent job of hiding and obstruction anyone from getting their hands on her email record.  I’m sorry, correction, “the peoples” email record.  For two years after her departure from the State Department she held her email record in secrecy and only turned it over after being compelled to do so by the State Department which was facing legal action if it did not start producing documents requested through the FOIA and subpoena.

But Hillary did not turn over her record to the State Department, she turned over some 50,000 pages of emails to which she claims to be the full record but there is no way to verify this as she, at the time, refused to turn over the email server to which they resided.  We have no way of knowing if in fact these 50,000 pages represents her full record and Hillary has given us every reason to believe they are not.  She did conceal the record from the public for two full years before being forced to turn it over right?  As well, email documents have surfaced that are clearly part of Hillary’s record yet were not provided in the 50,000 pages that were turned over to the State Department {or the State Department did not provide them to oversite}.  So there is little confidence that Hillary is being forthcoming to her claim that she has turned over her record in full.

Hillary is without a doubt hiding something and that something may not even be related to Benghazi.  Remember, the unique email arrangement she set up for herself took place right at the start of her tenure as Secretary of State.  In regards to Benghazi, her email arrangement became a convenience which potentially has allowed her to hide troublesome documents.  But the only way we will ever know this is if her email records can be recovered from the hard drive of the email server she deliberately had scrubbed of its contents, yet another action that points to an intentional cover-up.

This is why we are here people, this is why the Select Committee pushed so hard to have her email server put in the hands of an independent 3^rd party and made available for forensic analysis so that an attempt cold be made to recover any documents that may not have been included in Hillary’s interpretation of the complete record.   

As it turns out, other entities have now gotten involved and are attempting to restore the record as well, for other reasons mind you, but the end result will be the same.  If the record is able to be restored and there are more documents related to Benghazi, they will be turned over to the Select Committee.  These documents, if any, are the final step in the Benghazi investigation and will either conclude that there is no there there or that something very bad has been covered up by senior members of our government.   We as Americans should want the answer either way.

Regarding the issue of classified information on Hillary’s email server, that’s a whole other issue and looks as though it is being dealt with accordingly. 

And let us not forget, the record of all senior level government officials should be archived for a number or reasons but if for no other, so that we have a historical account of what has gone on in our government that we can always refer back to.