On Fox News Sunday, Democratic Congressman Fights Back Against GOP’s Benghazi Obsession

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During Sunday’s broadcast of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace had Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on to discuss both Benghazi and Ukraine. This past week, Republicans decided to push all in on Benghazi, as emails were recently released from the White House. Republicans feel the emails are the ‘smoking gun’ that shows that the White House tried to frame the Benghazi attack politically and blame the attack on an internet video rather than on extremists. Apparently, this particular conspiracy is centered on the feeling that President Obama wanted to maintain a certain narrative about al Qaeda. The release of these emails last week reinvigorated Republicans’ obsession around the attack, as they are hoping to use it to hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016 as well as hurt the Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2014 midterms.

As expected, Ayotte fell right in line with her GOP colleagues, as she pushed the need for a select committee to further investigate the White House when it comes to Benghazi. In fact, she pointed out that she’s been at the front of the Benghazi madness, as she wanted a House select committee formed right after the attacks and is glad that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is finally getting around to it, as he apparently caught Benghazi fever later than many other Republicans. After letting Ayotte say her piece, Wallace turned to Schiff. The Congressman obliterated the GOP’s case, pointing out that it is a ‘red herring’ and that he suggests that Democrats not be involved with this select committee so as not to lend it any credibility.

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WALLACE: Congressman Schiff, you have said that the Benghazi and you put it conspiracy theories are a terrible distraction from the real issue which is bringing the people who killed these four Americans to justice. Is this house committee part of that distraction? And how certain are you that Democrats will participate and put since it’s a select bipartisan committee, will put members on the committee?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF, D-CALIF., INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Chris, I think it’s a colossal waste of time. We’ve had four bipartisan investigations of this already. And I think it’s driven by a couple things. The Republican conference is so fractured, there’s only two things they agree on, they don’t like ObamaCare and so, we’ve had 50 votes on that and they do like talking about Benghazi. So, we’ve had four investigations on that.

But I don’t think it makes sense really for Democrats to participate. I think it’s just a tremendous red herring and a waste of taxpayer resources. So, I hope the speaker will reconsider. But it looks like he has bowed again to those from the farthest right of his conference.

WALLACE: When you say you don’t think it makes sense for Democrats to participate, you’re saying that you think that the Democrats should not appoint anybody to the special committee and let it simply be Republicans holding this investigation?

SCHIFF: You know, that’s what I recommend. I don’t know whether leadership will ultimately decide. But I don’t think it makes sense for us to give this select committee any more credibility than it deserves. Frankly, I don’t think it deserves very much. We tread down this path so many times.

In terms of this Rhodes memo, if you look at this four-page Rhodes memo, there’s only two sentences that pertain to Benghazi which track exactly what the CIA talking points were. So, it’s very hard to use this memo as some kind of a justification.

 

Wallace attempted to pivot back to how the emails seemed to show that the White House was attempting to frame the Benghazi attack as being caused by outrage over a video rather than a terrorist attack. Schiff fought back, pointing out that the emails discussed all of the protests that occurred in the Middle East over the video and did not just focus solely on Benghazi. He also pointed out that Wallace himself, when he had Susan Rice on the Sunday after the attacks, asked Rice 13 previous questions before getting to Benghazi. This was a way of reiterating that the main focus at the time was on the overall situation in the Middle East and the cause of those protests, rather than on the singular attack in Benghazi.

WALLACE: But then this week, under a court order, the administration had to release this memo from White House adviser Ben Rhodes, under the list goals for Rice, he wrote, “To underscore these protests are rooted in an Internet video and not a broader failure policy.”

Carney may have been right. They didn’t edit the CIA talking points. But it turns out Ben Rhodes and the White House had written their own talking points.

SCHIFF: They’ve written their talking points about what was going on in these protests in two dozen countries. And I think it’s important to remember what Ambassador Rice was preparing for on your show and others when she sat on the seat that I’m sitting in right now, Benghazi was not the first question you asked or the second or third, it was the 14th question you asked.

It’s not a criticism. But it’s reflection of the fact that the focus of your show like many others was this conflagration, these protests going on in 20 capitals on the countries —

WALLACE: You’re exactly right. But, sir, I have the Rhodes memo right here. And in it, he says, one of the goals, “That we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice.”

The only people who had been harmed, Americans, who had been harmed at that point were the four Americans who’d been killed in Benghazi.

On another page, he specifically refers to a report in a British newspaper about Benghazi.   So, to say this memo wasn’t about Benghazi is just not true, sir.

SCHIFF: Well, it’s true that two sentences of the four page memo are about Benghazi. But those two sentences are exactly what the CIA talking points said. And that’s exactly what Susan Rice.

WALLACE: No, because the CIA had never talked about the video.

SCHIFF: Well, what the CIA said was that the protests in Benghazi, and obviously, you say I got that wrong, were based on protests — inspired by the protests in Cairo which is what the ambassador said. Those protests in Cairo were inspired by the video.

And that’s exactly what the ambassador said. That’s exactly what the intelligence committee community believed at the time. That’s what General Petraeus briefed us on, and Director Clapper. That’s what was thought at that time.

So you can take issue with what the intelligence community did. There is nothing that contradicts that in the Rhodes memo.

 

It is apparent that Democrats are not going to let Republicans steamroll them anymore on this Benghazi nonsense. As Schiff said, there have been four full investigations in Benghazi. We don’t need to waste any more time on further hearings and investigations. While Fox News might be using every bit of effort to push this as a huge scandal, it doesn’t mean that Democrats need to play along. Schiff showed Sunday that Democrats are going to fight back.


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