McCarthy lets the cat out of the bag: Benghazi Committee a Taxpayer-Funded Hillary-Hating Super Pac [View all]

[kpete]

Where's the outrage?

General Prohibition Against Using Official Resources for Campaign or Political Purposes

The misuse of the funds and other resources that the House of Representatives entrusts to Members for the conduct of official House business is a very serious matter. Depending on the circumstances, such conduct may result in not only disciplinary action by the House, but also criminal prosecution.

https://ethics.house.gov/general-prohibition-against-using-official-resources-campaign-or-political-purposes

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Morning Plum: Top Republican suffers disastrous outbreak of candor about Hillary Benghazi probes
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By Greg Sargent September 30 at 9:32 AM

Twitter is abuzz with the news that the man who is likely to take over as Speaker of the House suffered from an accidental outbreak of candor on national television, directly linking House GOP investigations of Benghazi to Hillary Clinton’s dropping poll numbers. Here’s the exchange between GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Fox News’ Sean Hannity:

McCARTHY: Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not…

HANNITY: I agree. I give you credit for that.

In some ways, this is not really controversial. Congress is supposed to exercise oversight when it comes to public officials, in order to achieve accountability. In saying that this has revealed Clinton to be “untrustable” and that no one would have known the details of her conduct without a probe, McCarthy is saying that Congressional oversight has revealed information about her performance as Secretary of State that the public would not otherwise have known. Whether the fruits of the Benghazi probes actually do reveal her to be untrustworthy is for the public to decide, but it’s not out of bounds for Republicans to make that case.

The problem comes in the linking of this directly to Clinton’s “dropping numbers.” It suggests that the probes are less about genuine accountability than about driving up her negatives, to use the cliche so beloved by political pros. It is reasonable to surmise that the probes at this point are more about pumping out as much fog as possible to create a general impression of wrongdoing that, hopefully, will sow inchoate public doubts about Clinton. McCarthy’s quote may not prove this to be true, but it provides more support for that theory of the cas

http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/kevin-mccarthy-gives-boehner-b-credits-benghazi-committee-hurting-hillary-clintons-poll-numbers/?dcz=
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/



Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi Committee, responds:

“This stunning concession from Rep. McCarthy reveals the truth that Republicans never dared admit in public: the core Republican goal in establishing the Benghazi Committee was always to damage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and never to conduct an even-handed search for the facts. It is shameful that Republicans have used this tragedy and the deaths of our fellow Americans for political gain. Republicans have blatantly abused their authority in Congress by spending more than $4.5 million in taxpayer funds to pay for a political campaign against Hillary Clinton.”

http://democrats.benghazi.house.gov/news/press-releases/cummings-responds-to-gop-leader-s-admission-about-the-benghazi-committee