Gowdy Select Committee to Smear Clinton Crashes and Burns in Fatal Collision with Reality

[Fred Sanders]

Facts make Republicans sad. So they try to hide them.

................

The House Select Committee on Benghazi has been unable to corroborate Sharyl Attkisson's latest "bombshell" Benghazi exclusive, which claimed that "Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to 'separate' damaging documents" about the 2012 attacks before they were turned over to investigators. According to the committee's ranking Democrat, a "second witness" allegedly undermined the report.

In September, Attkisson reported for the Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal that former State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell alleged he had witnessed an "after hours session" at State Department headquarters at which he was told that employees had been ordered to "pull out anything that might put anybody" in the department's leadership "in a bad light" before documents were handed over to the Accountability Review Board, which was investigating the attacks. Maxwell claimed the actions were "unethical." Fox News quickly trumpeted the story as "a smoking gun of a potential cover-up," claiming that it showed State had been "scrubbing the documents" which were "destroyed" on Clinton's behalf.

...................

Rep. Cummings letter to the media and Chairman Gowdy:

"In fact, several weeks before you made those public statements, your staff had already interviewed Mr. Maxwell, but they did not include, invite, or even notify Democratic Members or staff. Mr. Maxwell apparently identified for your staff a second witness that he claimed was present during this document review at the State Department. Mr. Maxwell identified this person as someone who could corroborate his allegations and someone he believes is credible.

Then, on October 16 -- one day before you appeared on Fox News -- your staff interviewed this second witness, again without including Democrats. However, this second witness did not substantiate Mr. Maxwell's claims. To the contrary, he did not recall having been in the document review session Mr. Maxwell described, and he said he was never instructed to flag information in documents that might be unfavorable to the Department. He further reported that he never engaged or was aware of any destruction of documents.

I did not discover any of this information from you or your staff but from the witnesses themselves. When my staff inquired with your staff about what they learned from the witness identified by Mr. Maxwell, your staff stated that he had worked at the State Department during the relevant time period. Beyond that, however, they reported: "we learned nothing else of note in our discussion, so we don't plan to conduct any additional follow-up."

I am sure you understand -- as a former prosecutor -- that evaluating the credibility of witnesses and their allegations depends on whether the information they provide can be corroborated. Although your staff stated that they learned nothing "of note," in fact they learned that this claim was not substantiated by a key witness. If our goal is the truth and not a preconceived political narrative, these interviews should have been conducted jointly, with both Democrats and Republicans present."


http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/27/congressman-blows-a-hole-in-attkissons-benghazi/202276

And we all get the role of Fox forcing the continuation of this open charade, they demand a price for their free publicity.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/01/27/congresswoman-outlines-foxs-role-in-helping-gop/202277

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R

[bigtree]

2. my Rep. Cummings

...making the hometown proud.

Gowdy, on the other hand, is an ignorant fool.

'House Select Committee on Benghazi' is a clown show, complete with hilarious pratfalls. Shame that it's associating itself with such a sad event; exploiting the tragedy for petty political purposes.

-- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the families of victims of the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, attack have reached out to lawmakers to ask them not to launch another probe into the incident.

"Two of their families have called us and said, 'Please don't take us down this path again,'" Pelosi said during her weekly press conference. "It's really hard for them. It's very sad."

[Fred Sanders]

3. Cummings is a national treasure the media Wishes they could bury with a snowstorm.

Too much attention is being paid by rubes in the social media,, according to the mass media, even as the mass media gorges itself on the mana of Citizens' United bullshit. Much more feeding to come. Much more bullshit being made in the Koch Bullshit Mountain factories dotting the country.

If there is not another snowstorm for the mass media to blanket cover, then maybe it will get out to the folks that the GOP Congress has gone mad with impotent power lust.

[Fred Sanders]

4. Mad beats sad. When have this warped version of the GOP ever shown a shred of compassion for

anyone? Just gaze upon the jaw dropping spectacle of how thier twisted hypocrisy causes their tired old evangelical Catholism cult of "firmly held belief/myths" to turn around on itself like a viper swallowing it's own tail, and disappearing even the teachings of Jesus - now He is the main traitor to their holy roller cause? How did that happen?

[bigtree]

5. I work with a fellow who's convinced 'Benghazi is a political winner

...I doubt most Americans know what to think; that is, beyond the republican faithful who buy the rhetoric thrown out about Clinton being somehow responsible for the deaths of the diplomats. That's their base of support. I'm not convinced, though, that this story goes very far beyond those who have invested belief in it's political worth.

[RoverSuswade]

6. Clinton / Cummings 2016

Worth a thought.

[wyldwolf]

7. this is usually the case

"... Smear Clinton Crashes and Burns in Fatal Collision with Reality."

[slumcamper]

8. Petition: SAVE THE LETTERS!

I respectfully request that when referring to Rupert Murdoch's propaganda machine, hereafter DU posters make a conscious effort to purge the "NEWS" part from it. Save the letters!

Great post, Fred. This obsessive, deranged and rabid effort to construct an alternate set of facts to gird their distorted sense of reality is the very definition of irrationality. To have so many exhibiting such a serious psychological disorder is a grave circumstance indeed.

[valerief]

9. When has reality ever stopped a good smear in America? nt