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Benghazi Tag

A year after the House Select Committee on Benghazi made its initial request, the State Department finally handed over 1,100 pages of records. These records contain include files, "stored on network folders used by senior employees within the Office of the Secretary, and emails from Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan, Huma Abedin, Susan Rice, and Patrick Kennedy," according to the Select Committee. Records received Friday were in response to requests made by the committee in November of 2014. When the requests were unanswered, subpoena's were issued in March of 2015. Rep. Trey Gowdy, Committee Chairman said:

The House's Select Committee on Benghazi was created with bipartisan support to investigate the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time. A former committee staffer alleged he was wrongfully terminated for refusing, "to conduct a partisan probe of the former secretary of state," reports Politico. Now, Bradley Podliska is changing his tune. From Politico:
Last October, an ex-GOP Benghazi Committee staffer filed a lawsuit against the panel, claiming he was wrongly fired for refusing to center his investigation on Hillary Clinton — an accusation Clinton’s defenders held up as proof that the panel had devolved into a political witch hunt.

We all remember Hillary Clinton's, along with assorted Obama administration officials', televised assertions that the Benghazi attacks that left four men—an American ambassador (Christopher Stevens), two former Navy SEALS (Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty), and one embassy aide (Sean Smith)—brutally murdered in a terrorist attack was the result of an anti-Islamist video. As of the most recent Democrat debate, Hillary is still standing by that assertion and even going so far as to imply the Benghazi victims' families are lying about what she told them. Following Hillary's repeated assertions that the video was the cause of the "spontaneous" attack on the Benghazi compound and the subsequent revelations that the attack was neither spontaneous nor the result of a video, the victims' families came forward with the information that Hillary had told them that the video was to blame long after she knew that not to be the case. Watch one victim's mother express her outrage at Hillary for lying to her:

A questioner identifying himself as a former Marine was removed from an event in South Carolina this weekend where Bill Clinton was speaking on behalf of his wife. The man was asking Clinton about Benghazi and the crowd didn't like it. The Marine could have handled it better. As you'll see in the video below, he never really gives Clinton a chance to respond.

Warning: Spoilers I can't call myself an aficionado of action flicks, so I'm not sure where where 13 Hours falls within that genre.  I did find the movie intense, the lead parts were masterfully played and it offered plenty of food for thought. It might be red meat for the conservative base, but in terms of pure propaganda value, in terms of effect on those who don't study politics closely, 13 Hours falls short. The movie follows six veterans, now contractors, providing security for the CIA outpost in war-torn, terrorist-infested Libyan town of Benghazi.  On one hand we have bravery, camaraderie and leadership of men like Jack Silva and Tyrone Woods, played by John Krasinski and James Badge Dale respectively, and on the other --stupidity and indifference bordering on betrayal everywhere they turn.  The American team was abandoned by the key local allies, denied adequate resources by its own country and when they needed rescue, help was too slow to come -- you know the story.

The new Michael Bay film "13 Hours" is out now and is by all accounts, an accurate portrayal of the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya. In a move that is as funny as it is politically savvy, Donald Trump is making sure the voters of Iowa get a chance to see it. The Des Moines Register reports:
Trump rents Iowa theater to show Benghazi movie Donald Trump has rented space at an Urbandale movie theater and will give Iowans free tickets to a showing of the Benghazi movie that critics of Hillary Clinton have been eagerly awaiting. “Mr. Trump would like all Americans to know the truth about what happened at Benghazi,” the GOP presidential candidate’s Iowa co-chair Tana Goertz said Thursday night.

Wednesday, Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi hurled an already debunked accusation at Committee Republicans. They claim the contentious investigation into the terrorist attack on the U.S.'s Benghazi embassy in 2012 has gone on longer than the Congressional investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. There's one tiny little problem with their latest claim -- it's not true. Committee Democrats write [emphasis mine]:
Today marks the 609th day since the authorization of the Select Committee on Benghazi, surpassing the length of time the 9/11 Commission took to investigate the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.

Out of the spotlight, the House Select Committee on Benghazi quietly conducted its sixty-first interview Thursday. The Select Committee is on track to interview 70 witnesses prior to releasing its report. According to the Committee's press shop:

Judicial Watch has obtained new emails (available here) that reveal a bit more about Hillary Clinton's time at State than we knew before (or than she probably wants revealed). Judicial Watch reports:
Judicial Watch today released a new batch of emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton connected to the Benghazi attack. Included is an email chain showing that Clinton slept late the Saturday after the Benghazi attack and missed a meeting that her staff had been trying to set up about sensitive intelligence issues, including the Presidential Daily Brief, on a day she was to make a slew of phone calls to foreign leaders.
There was also an interesting detail in an email concerning Bowe Bergdahl's father's concern over "Crusader paradigm."
The documents contain an email passed to Clinton in the days following the Benghazi attack in which the father of alleged Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl anguishes over the “‘Crusade’ paradigm” which he says “will never be forgotten in this part of the world.”
You may remember Mr. Bergdahl from Obama's over-the-top, tin-eared, and inappropriate Rose Garden ceremony announcing the exchange of Bowe Bergdahl, who has since been charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, for five top Taliban leaders.

The State Department published another batch of Hillary's emails Monday as part of their rolling release thanks to a court order. The emails are a portion of the chunk Hillary turned over to the State Department from her personal server. She or her legal counsel (Clinton has been opaque here) determined what emails were worthy of State Department record. Pilfering through the emails, readers have found all kinds of fun stuff. Evidently, everyone loved Hillary's glasses. And Blumenthal thought he had a huge scoop:

Hillary Clinton's widely publicized public hearing before the House Select Committee on Benghazi did not signify the end of the committee's investigation. Earlier this week, the House Select Committee interviewed an unnamed witness from the State Department. Sarah Westwood of the Washington Examiner has that story:
Members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi interviewed an unnamed State Department witness Wednesday in a closed-door, transcribed session. The witness, who worked on Libya policy at the agency, was the third interviewed by the committee since its highly-publicized hearing with Hillary Clinton on Oct. 22.

Andrew McCarthy has written a National Review article entitled "Hillary's Breathtaking Mendacity." It describes the lies that were revealed and "made explicit" in Clinton's testimony before the Benghazi committee last Thursday, and it's well worth reading in its entirely. But it also exemplifies a response that's occurring only on the right. McCarthy's clear and painstaking description of how Clinton lied to the American people (but not to her daughter) is freely available to all who read National Review, but how many people would that be, compared to those who read the ubiquitous MSM spin that says she acquitted herself admirably in the hearings and no one laid a glove on her, nor was any new or interesting information revealed? The Benghazi hearings have underlined---even though such underlining wasn't needed---how those who control the narrative control the perception and even the conclusion. Clinton can lie through her teeth about material facts for political reasons, it can be demonstrated over and over (or it can be obvious to anyone listening or paying a particle of attention), and if the media decides to ignore that fact, how many people will look for themselves and decide for themselves? Very few, I'm afraid. Apparently, facts are not stubborn things. Not any more. Maybe they never were.

The liberal talking point about the Benghazi committee is that Hillary Clinton won the battle and emerged unscathed but in order to believe that, you first have to ignore one major lie that was uncovered. The attack had nothing to do with a video. That is not what we were told. The idea of a terror attack on an American embassy on 9/11 just before a presidential election didn't match Obama's grandiose claims that al Qaeda was on the run. In the days that followed the Benghazi attack, the lie about it being based on a video was parroted by Hillary Clinton, Jay Carney, Susan Rice and even Obama himself.

Democratic Presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton will testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi at 10:00 EST. Watch live: [session over] This is the most talked about part of the day -- Hillary admitting video had nothing to do with Benghazi attack and that she told people at the time, but the American public was told otherwise:

After the attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama Administration moved quickly to blame the carnage on "The Innocence of Muslims" video on YouTube. Remember? The Administration attempted to blame the violence on "an awful video that we had nothing to do with" no less than seven times, even as it became abundantly clear that the murderers who laid waste to the compound were there on a mission, and not as part of a spontaneous protest. Now, new documents from the State Department, acquired by advocacy group Judicial Watch, show that the White House attempted to shuttle the blame onto another, more obscure YouTube video almost immediately after the attacks took place.

Today, top-level Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin sat down for a closed-door hearing with Trey Gowdy's (R-SC) Benghazi Committee. Her testimony is just a warm-up act, though---next Thursday, Clinton herself will testify before the panel in a public hearing. (Be prepared for fireworks---covered right here at Legal Insurrection.) The Clinton campaign---on which Huma is a senior advisor---said they are "unclear" as to why the committee wishes to question their latest witness. This next series of hearings is important for Gowdy and the committee; ever since House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) dropped his massive Benghazi gaffe late last month, the Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, have been on a mission to shut the committee down. They claim that McCarthy's gaffe proves that Gowdy and other Republicans set the committee up as a shell operation, and that their real purpose is to attack and ruin Clinton's chances at the presidency. Gowdy has had to fire back at a barrage of accusations not only from the Clinton camp, but from Democrats and even members of his own party that Huma's testimony, and the overall mission of the committee, is not politically motivated.

Since news first broke about Hillary Clinton's "home-brew" email server, conservatives and transparency advocates have run a full-court press against Clinton's efforts to keep prying hands off of her official and personal communications. What should have been a simple (if massive) request for transparency has ballooned into a legal and political nightmare, leaving investigators open to a barrage of accusations claiming that, when it comes to Clinton, former Secretaries of State should remain virtually untouchable. The idea is nonsense, not only because it ignores the law, but because it ignores the question anyone with a brain and common sense has been asking since day one, but no one with a big enough megaphone has asked. Finally, someone asked it. During a town hall-style interview for the Today Show, Savannah Guthrie went there, asking Clinton, "do you know how bad it looks?" Watch:

BREAKING: a politician said a stupid thing on TV last night. By now, you've probably seen breathless coverage of House Majority Leader and presumed future Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) comments propping up the Select Committee on Benghazi as an example of House Republicans' efforts to fight for conservative principles. He appeared in an interview with Sean Hannity last night, and after 4 minutes of back-and-forth, fumbled a damaging talking point: