South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy says that the White House is hiding Benghazi documents and he has the evidence to prove it.
Gowdy told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren:
“I have evidence that, not only are they hiding it, there is an intent to hide it,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told Greta van Susteren on FOX News. “I can’t disclose that evidence yet, but I have evidence that there was a systematic, intentional decision to withhold certain documents from Congress. And we’re just sick of it. So we’re gonna have him come explain why we’re getting documents 20 months late.”
“If you want to have Greg Hicks and the station chief from Tripoli and Hillary Clinton all sitting at the same table, you need to have a committee that has the power to do that. And a select committee would have that power,” Gowdy said on Friday.
Gowdy is being considered to chair the upcoming select committee that will investigate the Benghazi attacks.
Whichever Republican is chosen, Democrats may not be joining them on the committee. California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff called on Democrats to boycott the hearings, calling them “a colossal waste of time.”
King, speaking afterward with Fox News, said this would be a “mistake” for Democrats as it would show they “cannot defend the administration.”
“If Democrats boycott this committee, refuse to take part, the American people are going to conclude, and I think quite rightly, that they feel they have something to hide,” King said.
Schiff, who called the select committee a “tremendous red herring,” acknowledged he doesn’t know what Democratic leadership will decide.
Fox News was told on Friday that the panel would be bipartisan. Schiff’s comments, though, raise the prospect that his party could try to define the committee as a political vessel by sitting it out. The remarks reflect how the committee, which has not yet been formally approved, already is a political football. It would begin its investigative work in the heat of the midterm election season, poised to level damaging charges against the Obama administration at a sensitive time.
Leading Republicans were adamant that the committee is vital to get to the bottom of what happened in the days and weeks following the Sept. 11, 2012, attack which killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador.
The tipping point for those, like Boehner, who were hesitant about forming a select committee, was the release of an email that showed a White House adviser reviewing talking points for then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice. The email stressed the role of protests over an anti-Islam video — which is the faulty explanation Rice went on to use to describe the Benghazi attack’s origin on Sunday news shows after the tragedy.
The White House maintains that email referenced protests elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa, but Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said that claim “doesn’t pass the laugh test.”
She told “Fox News Sunday” the email shows the need for a select committee. Ayotte said there still hasn’t been a clear explanation of why Rice connected the attack to a video.
“The video story clearly came from the White House,” she said, calling it a “political explanation leading up to an election.”
“This did not fit their narrative,” Ayotte said.
The Democrats are going to rely on the media to run interference for them. The narrative being developed was perfectly captured by the former campaign bus driver and National Security spokesman Tommy Vietor, who remarked to Bret Baier, “Dude, it was, like, two years ago.”
The more dangerous the threat, the more dismissive must be the response. You don’t get much more dismissive than letting out a yawn and claiming the bombshell is old news.
Gowdy has been mentioned as a possible chair for the select committee He would be a good choice, mostly because he knows the issues surrounding Benghazi and has been pretty effective on the Sunday shows in articulating a GOP response.
But is he too partisan? I guess if the Democrats boycott, the Republicans could put the most partisan member in the chair and it wouldn’t make much difference.
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