Democratic members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi announced Friday that they would continue to participate on the “partisan” panel after Hillary Clinton’s marathon testimony.
“After yesterday’s 11-hour hearing, there can be no remaining doubt that the Benghazi Select Committee is a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition to derail Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign,” the committee’s Democrats said in a statement. “After meeting with Leader Pelosi today, we are calling on Speaker Boehner to immediately shut down this abusive, wasteful, and obviously partisan effort. If the Speaker rejects our request, Democrats will continue to participate at this point in order to make sure the facts are known and the conspiracy theories are debunked.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said earlier this week in an interview with Reuters that the panel’s Democrats were concerned their presence lent “legitimacy, by being there, to a committee that really has none.” The Benghazi committee was rocked in recent weeks by suggestions from both sides of the aisle that the panel was designed to target Clinton’s political hopes.
Ugh. Democratic presence matters not to the professional hitmen on the Right. They will continue to lie and distort until the panel is shut down completely. The Dems should have walked as soon as Hillary’s testimony was over and never looked back.
While I understand the temptation to boycott, it’s wiser not to. The committee operates by taking testimony in secret and then leaking distorted versions… only Dems on the committee can fight back against that, as they have already done effectively.
In short, don’t let the GOP conspirators have an unchecked voice.
After yesterday, no one could possibly think the Dems are conceding any legitimacy to the committee by staying. They are explicitly remaining to thwart GOP plots… as they should.
I agree with Schiff.
“After yesterday’s 11-hour hearing, there can be no remaining doubt that the Benghazi Select Committee is a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition to derail Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign," . . . FULL STOP.
So quit. Stop wasting your time as you have the “People’s work” to do. It’s not like your presence is going to change anything or put the thing to rest.
The Democrats need to stay, and use every opportunity they can seize to further expose this sham “investigation” for what it is. For starters, in public session, whenever a Democrat is recognized, they should begin their comments citing the cumulative cost of the committee’s efforts and the results achieved (zero).
The complete illegitimacy of this “Select” committee needs to be kept before the public at every turn, and only the Democrats can do that…