Greg Sargent at the Washington Post asks, “Now that the House Benghazi committee held its grand showdown with Hillary Clinton, and the media consensus is that she held her own and little new ground was broken, the question is: What does the committee do now?”
In my opinion, on the Democratic side, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, whose “passionate, earnest and stellar performance earned him the highest praise from fellow lawmakers and Democrats,” could start preparing for a run for the Maryland Senate seat soon to be relinquished by Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski.
Cummings would love to set a “date-certain” to bring the so-called investigation to a close. He tells Sargent that if the investigation stretches into 2016, “It will continue to appear to be an attack on the campaign of Hillary Clinton, to derail her efforts by any means necessary. It will be financed improperly by taxpayer dollars. I believe they should wrap this up.”
But how about Gowdy’s gang of bumbling, wannabe Inquisitors?
Well, it appears that Republicans not only see more Benghazi, but also see life after Benghazi in what appears to be a detour into e-mail land.
According to Sargent, Republicans reportedly seemed to be sensitive to the perception that “the longer the probe continues, the deeper it strays into the presidential election season, making it easier for Democrats to dismiss it as politically motivated,” and were reconsidering previous plans to “call as a witness an ex-Clinton campaign staffer who could shed light on the process by which her emails were turned over to the State Department,” in other words to “move away from the emails.”
But at least one person wasn’t buying all this.
Sargent:
But in the interview with me, Cummings questioned the sincerity of this shift away from the emails. Cummings argued that the committee had already scheduled hearings with defense and intelligence officials to testify about the Benghazi attacks way back at the beginning of the year — but had cancelled them.
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“We had a plan already to call these people to a number of hearings, and all of them got thrown out the window,” Cummings said. “We should have done this long ago. The credibility of the committee has been damaged.”
And, voila, in an update to his column, Sargent quotes a message from Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Rep. Gowdy and committee Republicans:
“Chairman Gowdy is committed to conducing a meticulous and fact-based investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks to provide the final, definitive accounting of this tragedy for the families and the American people. Meanwhile, Mr. Cummings and the Democrats have never been interested in conducting a serious investigation into Benghazi, including repeated threats to leave the committee and issuing a now discredited reported claiming all had been ‘Asked and Answered.’ If they were serious, they would have been a part of uncovering Clinton’s unusual and unprecedented email arrangement, which they were not, and requesting access to all of Ambassador Stevens Libya and Benghazi related emails, which they were not. When it comes to dogged pursuit of investigatory facts on Benghazi, the committee majority’s record is pretty clear.”
Emphasis mine.
It is thus pretty clear that when it comes to the “dogged pursuit of investigatory facts,” the Gowdy team’s life after Benghazi will be for the sole purpose of breathing new life into Hillary Clinton’s so-called e-mail scandal.
So, Congressman Cummings, do focus on your Senate campaign, but please be on call 24/7 to once again and hopefully once and for all put an end to this shameful political witch-hunt.
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The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.