NY Times Picks Up Benghazi! Witch Hunt Story, Implicates Boehner
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A shocker from “the paper of record” that seems to have had it in for the Clintons since the early 1990s: accusations by a former House Select Committee on Benghazi investigator that the probe had become a partisan, likely intentionally protracted witch-hunt targeting presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have made their online front page:
Now, 17 months [after the committee was formed] — longer than the Watergate investigation lasted — interviews with current and former committee staff members as well as internal committee documents reviewed by The New York Times show the extent to which the focus of the committee’s work has shifted from the circumstances surrounding the Benghazi attack to the politically charged issue of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. …
Bradley F. Podliska, an Air Force Reserve officer who began working for the Republican staff of the committee in September 2014 but has since been fired, said in an interview that the panel changed its focus this spring, shortly after staff members learned that Mrs. Clinton had exclusively used a private email account as secretary of state, including during the Benghazi attacks. The committee dismissed Major Podliska in June, and he has said he plans to file a complaint in federal court about his termination.
Major Podliska described an odd encounter with one of his bosses in April.
“Keep your head down,” Major Podliska said, recalling what Christopher Donesa, the committee’s deputy staff director, had told him after praising his progress. Mr. Donesa paused for a moment, according to Major Podliska, then added, “This is taking a turn.”
Major Podliska said the committee was becoming focused primarily on the State Department, and in particular on Mrs. Clinton.
Republican staff members said Major Podliska had been dismissed in part because he had demonstrated “improper partiality and animus in his investigative work” toward Mrs. Clinton and had mishandled classified material, which Major Podliska disputes.
But for months, documents and interviews show, the work of the Benghazi committee has been affected by delays and dysfunction.
The process of setting up an electronic system to manage more than 50,000 pages of documents that the committee has assembled is still not complete, meaning that staff members sometimes have to search through boxes to find critical pieces of paper — an almost comical task, staff members said.
They have spent months sparring with Obama administration agencies trying to get documents, eating up time the committee had planned to use investigating the attacks.
With the slow progress, members have engaged in social activities like a wine club nicknamed “Wine Wednesdays,” drinking from glasses imprinted with the words “Glacial Pace,” a dig at Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the committee’s ranking member, Major Podliska said. Mr. Cummings used the term to question the speed of the committee’s work.
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Oh, and there’s this, buried deep in the article, implicating Boehner in the dirty tricks:
Senior Republican officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing confidential conversations, said that [House Speaker John] Boehner had long been suspicious of the administration’s handling of the attacks and that Mrs. Clinton’s emails gave him a way to keep the issue alive and to cause political problems for her campaign. But he thought that the task was too delicate to entrust to others and that it should remain with Mr. Gowdy, the former prosecutor.
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