Republicans may be successful at subverting the possibility of getting to the bottom of the scandal — which they are now clearly trying to do, by creating a distraction aimed at diverting public attention away from story and instead towards conspiracy theories involving the Obama administration.
.. The aim is to cast the Russia investigation as another Benghazi — by turning former National Security Advisor Susan Rice into the villain of the story, and fixing the focus of the hearings on her.
.. All of Trump’s efforts to smear his predecessor, including accusing former President Obama of ordering surveillance of Trump Tower, and claiming that Rice had committed a crime, have been proven false — something Trump and his allies refuse to even acknowledge.
.. rather than retract his baseless tweet, Trump and his allies latched onto it, spinning implausible theories in an effort to drum up even a sliver of evidence for it after the fact.
.. the White House “put out an all-points bulletin” to “find something that justifies the President’s crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower.”
.. Nunes appeared to collaborate with the White House to review cherry-picked classified intelligence and leak it to the media to craft a false narrative that the Obama administration had somehow surveilled the Trump team.
.. One thing to watch for now is the role the conservative media — allied with Trump — will likely play in shifting the focus to Rice. Primed by another spurious, politicized GOP investigation involving Rice (Benghazi), conservative pundits are eager to portray Rice as a devious figure in this new narrative.
.. But it now looks as if the House Intelligence Committee will try to embroil Rice in the Russia hearings, anyway. If so, it will show just how far the Committee’s Republicans are willing to go to prop up Trump’s lies — and to distract from efforts to get to the bottom of Russian meddling, as well as any possible Trump campaign collusion with it.
Congressman Jason Chaffetz
After college, Chaffetz worked for about a decade in public relations for a multi-level marketing company, Nu Skin International
.. Although Cannon was one of the most conservative members of the House, Chaffetz ran to his right.
.. Chaffetz announced at the start of the congressional term, in 2009, that he would be sleeping on a cot in his office, rather than renting a Washington, D.C., apartment.[54] Chaffetz said, “I’m trying to live the example that it doesn’t take big dollars in order to get where we want to go. I can save my family $1,500 a month by sleeping on a cot in my office as opposed to getting a fancy place that’s maybe a little bit more comfortable
.. Chaffetz has been criticized for politicizing the Benghazi incident, acknowledging in an interview with CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien that he had “voted to cut the funding for embassy security” and that House Republicans had consciously voted to reduce the funds allocated to the State Department for embassy security since winning the majority in 2010. “Absolutely,” he said. “Look, we have to make priorities and choices in this country.”[75]
.. In a September 2015 hearing, Chaffetz questioned Planned Parenthood‘s president Cecile Richards on her salary,[80] and displayed a chart he claimed was taken from Planned Parenthood’s annual report, but sources confirm the claim the chart was actually taken from Americans United for Life chart data that was deliberately manipulated using questionable dual-axis charting methodologies. Experts in data presentation said this was an egregious example of using a chart to mislead.[81]
.. Following the Donald Trump Access Hollywood controversy, on October 7, 2016, Rep. Chaffetz was the first GOP Congressperson to rescind his endorsement of GOP Presidential Candidate Donald Trump.[82] “I can’t endorse somebody who acts and thinks like this.
Why did Hillary let four Americans die in Benghazi?
The compound in Benghazi wasn’t an embassy nor was it a consulate. It was a temporary diplomatic mission being considered for permanent status (in fact, Ambassador Stevens was there working on that very process).
Because it was neither a consulate nor an embassy, it did not have the same level of security as those types of facilities would have. They had requested additional security, but so had most diplomatic compounds in the region. The diplomatic security budget was maxed out, and the increase requested by the executive branch were not granted. There were no actionable leads prior to the attack, though the intelligence community had pointed out a general instability, and so no additional security budget was allocated. The State Department assumed, wrongly, that maintaining a low profile was the best way to protect the compound until it was granted permanent status.
Top GOP Benghazi lawyer: ‘Nothing’ could have prevented American deaths
The chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, before leaving the Republican-led committee earlier this year, said he did not believe the Pentagon could have done more to save American lives during the night of the attack, according to copies of his comments included in a Sunday letter from Democrats to Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.).
Army Lt. Gen. Dana Chipman told former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in a transcribed interview by the panel in January that “nothing could have affected what occurred in Benghazi” to prevent the deaths of four Americans in the immediate response to the attacks, the letter released by Democrats states.
.. Gowdy has responded that the Pentagon has sought to block him from talking to people on the ground the night of the attacks.
.. Gowdy has responded that the Pentagon has sought to block him from talking to people on the ground the night of the attacks.