It Gets Worse For Republicans As GOP Busted For Lying About Access To Emails

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Democrats caught Republican Benghazi Select Committee members in a stone cold lie when Trey Gowdy and Lynn Westmoreland claimed that Congress did not have access to Amb. Ted Stevens’ emails.

Select Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said on Face The Nation, “none of the seven previous committees bothered to access the emails of our Ambassador.”

Republican Select Committee Member Rep. Mike Pompeo said on Meet The Press, “How on earth could any of the other committees have completed their work properly without access to the senior person on the ground’s emails?”

Today on CNN, Committee Member Lynn Westmoreland said on CNN, “Wouldn’t you want to know the emails of the guy that was there that was murdered and what he had asked for as far as help from the people he worked for? We’ve just now gotten those emails. We have just now gotten them. Nobody else had requested them. I haven’t had a chance to read them. We didn’t get them until the day before yesterday.”

The Democrats on the Benghazi Committee responded by crushing this Republican lie:

Contrary to Republican claims, multiple committees of Congress—including the Oversight Committee on which Chairman Gowdy serves—had access to many of Ambassador Stevens’ emails for years. On November 24, 2014, and December 9, 2014, the State Department produced to the Select Committee approximately 25,000 pages of documents that had already been “previously produced to Congress.”

Some of these emails from Ambassador Stevens included:

– an August 19, 2011, email exchange between Special Envoy Stevens and the Deputy Director of the Office of Maghreb Affairs about the logistics of providing security for a temporary duty officer to be assigned to eastern Libya (C05392462);

– a September 6, 2011, email from Special Envoy Stevens explaining why he felt it was important to maintain a U.S. presence in Benghazi (C05389447);

– a June 12, 2012, email exchange between Ambassador Stevens and the Director of the Office of Maghreb Affairs about the security situation in Benghazi (C05409960);

– a June 13, 2012, email exchange between Ambassador Stevens and State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland about the Department’s public statements in light of recent violence in Libya (C05391866);

– an August 30, 2012, email exchange between Ambassador Stevens and the Principal Officer in Benghazi discussing a press report about the security situation in Benghazi (C05397290); and

– a September 8, 2012, email exchange between Ambassador Stevens and the Political Officer in Tripoli discussing a schedule for Ambassador Stevens’ upcoming travel to Benghazi (C05395356).

Political observers have witnessed this behavior during other debunked Republican scandals. House Republicans ignored reality when they were investigating the IRS scandal. Republicans have pulled this same stunt during the other Benghazi investigations.

House Republicans have nothing new to investigate, so they are reviving old lies, and pretending that the previous investigations never happened.

The lies are piling up, and House Republicans have nowhere to go but down. Democrats are shredding the Benghazi investigation before Hillary Clinton sits down to testify.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association