McCarthy is Believed to be the Next Speaker of the House

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday evening linked the House Select Committee on Benghazi with Hillary Clinton's dropping poll numbers.

"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee," McCarthy said on Fox News's "Hannity."
 
"What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she's untrustable," McCarthy continued.
 
"But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen," McCarthy said on Fox while making his pitch to become the next Speaker.

Democrats on the committee have said the panel has run its course and have accused Republicans of making it a partisan vehicle to attack the former secretary of State.
 
The ranking Democrat on the Benghazi panel responded to McCarthy's "stunning concession," saying it showed "the core Republican goal" in creating the panel was to hurt Clinton politically.
 
"It is shameful that Republicans have used this tragedy and the deaths of our fellow Americans for political gain," Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a statement Wednesday, noting that Congress has spent $4.5 million on the committee.
 
"In boasting of how the Select Committee had driven down the poll numbers of Secretary Hillary Clinton, McCarthy laid bare the abusive purpose of this taxpayer funded committee," another Democrat on the panel, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), said in a statement Wednesday.
 
Schiff said that after 16 months and millions of dollars, the committee "has gained no new insights into the attacks in Benghazi" and reiterated calls for the panel to end.
 
Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) has maintained that the committee is nonpartisan and essential for a "definitive accounting" of the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya.

So, question - has this panel found anything of relevance on Benghazi? At all?

No, it's already been confirmed that Clinton and the rest of the Obama administration were in no way responsible for that by multiple government and independent investigations.

Quote from: spewky bewgie on September 30, 2015, 09:36:43 AM

So, question - has this panel found anything of relevance on Benghazi? At all?

Quite a bit. Tens of thousands of emails and related documents, interviews of dozens of witnesses and survivors of the attack, and probably the most important

And this has turned up what, exactly? Has it led to anything significant, other than more partisan attacks claiming that Obama and Clinton need to be jailed?

exposing Clinton's use of a personal email account when conducting state affairs and the subsequent publication of her attempt to cover up the information in the account by deleting swaths of emails and cherrypicking which to release publicly.

It is not their role as the Benghazi committee to investigate Clinton's use of the private server (Even though we know that is going to be what 90% of the questions at her hearing will be about). Their committee is about the events that led up to, occurred, and followed the attacks in Benghazi - any investigating or hearings about the private server should be held within a separate committee, with all pertinent information to the Benghazi investigation sent over to this committee.

This committee was deigned to investigate the events, find out what went wrong, and make appropriate changes to prevent future incidents (As were the other, what, seven committees?) - it has simply turned into a political shitfest ahead of the 2016 elections.

Quote from: spewky bewgie on September 30, 2015, 11:45:39 AM

And this has turned up what, exactly?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Access to more information allows them to have a more informed picture of what happen to learn about what happened and why. They're not specifically looking for wrongdoing; these committees occur after any major incident, to uncover as much information as possible.

We've had, at least, five committees on the incident - both in the House, and Senate. Aside from the email thing, we aren't getting anything new - so why on Earth are we wasting four + million for a committee that's going to get the same answers that every other one has?

It's a blatant waste, and a joke.

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It is not their role as the Benghazi committee to investigate Clinton's use of the private server

They're not. They were probably trying to get emails from the state department about the incident and discovered gaps that led to the knowledge that Clinton and her staff were deleting emails related to the attack en masse. The committee turned that information over to the FBI who are conducting the investigation under the charge of some other department of the government.

Then why is it that nearly every news post on the committees website has something to do with the email server, the State departments handling, etc?

Not to mention the fact that there hasn't been a hearing on the topic since January. Hell, the Blumenthal interview in June made next to no references to Benghazi - it was solely about the emails.

This committee is a farce - they have uncovered nothing new, nothing substantial to explain what happened and rectify it in future incidents. It's a waste of taxpayer money.

Quote from: spewky bewgie on September 30, 2015, 11:59:46 AM

Then why is it that nearly every news post on the committees website has something to do with the email server, the State departments handling, etc?

Probably because that's the largest source of undisclosed information on the subject. If the State Department had released its emails to Congress (and the citizens of the country) as legally obligated, the investigation would probably be over. The only thing dragging out the process is the State Department's lack of transparency and unwillingness to cooperate.

State Department has always been slow with shit, especially when they are getting tens of thousands of emails at once to process, archive, redact, and send out.

Way to ignore the fact that the committee hasn't held a hearing in nine months.