Every once in a while Republicans tell the truth, although most often it is by mistake or inadvertently. Breaking that mold is Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) who has confirmed what Kevin McCarthy slipped up and stated last month: the main goal of the House Benghazi Committee has been to harm Hillary Clinton in anticipation of the 2016 presidential election. Millions of dollars spent and hearings that have now gone on longer than the Watergate hearings - all for the partisan purpose of harming a political opponent. Think Progress looks at this latest admission of the real agenda of the House Republicans behind the Benghazi hearings. As the image above indicates, there were far more deaths of State Department personnel under George W. Bush, yet there was no GOP outrage. Here are article highlights:
A second House Republican has now conceded that the overarching purpose of the House Select Committee on Benghazi has been to attack former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In September, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) argued that one of House Republicans’ successes has been using the Benghazi Committee to drive down Clinton’s poll numbers. Though McCarthy tried to walk back his controversial comments, Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) argued on Wednesday that the Majority Leader had it right to begin with.
“Sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in D.C. is to tell the truth,” Hanna said in an interview on Keeler in the Morning, a radio show in upstate New York. The third-term congressman paused for a moment, perhaps recognizing the importance of what he was about to say, before going on to agree with McCarthy’s original statement.
“This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton,” Hanna said.
For years, House Republicans had claimed the Benghazi probe was about investigating the events surrounding the 2012 attack in Libya that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, rather than undermining Clinton’s potential presidential bid.
But after McCarthy’s Kinsley gaffe, which was among the factors that doomed his seemingly-inevitable rise to the House Speakership, and now Hanna’s admission, there is growing doubt even among GOPers about the Benghazi Committee’s true purpose.
McCarthy and Hanna aren’t the only Republicans to publicly declare that the Benghazi Committee has been on a partisan quest. Over the weekend, Maj. Bradley Podliska, a Republican investigator formerly working on the Committee, revealed that he had lost his job for refusing to solely focus his investigation on Clinton. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who heads the Committee, denies the charge.
Clinton is set to testify before the Committee, which has now continued longer than the Watergate probe, on October 22nd.
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