Hillary Clinton finally testified before Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi Committee last week. The Democrats on the Committee spent most of their time whining that the whole investigation had been a waste of time and money (like they’ve ever given a damn about wasting money.) And most in the mainstream media (and even some conservative outlets and pundits who ought to know better) concluded that the Gowdy Committee hadn’t laid a glove on Hillary.
Don’t buy it.
First of all, yes, the investigation thus far has cost taxpayers approximately $5 million. But four brave Americans lost their lives, and we owe it to them to find out why, who was responsible, and how we can avoid American casualties in the future. And such investigations cost money. Unless some private entity is willing to foot the bill, as Donald Trump did in investigating Barack Obama’s birth certificate controversy, or as Hustler Magazine’s Larry Flynt did investigating the Prosecutors (including me) in the impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton.
But most importantly, the investigation resulted in the discovery of a smoking gun. Let me explain.
The Benghazi attack took place on September 11, 2012, two months before a hotly contested presidential election. At the Democratic Convention, Joe Biden had summed up the Obama Administration’s argument for reelection as “Osama bin Laden’s dead, and General Motors is alive” and Barack Obama had boasted that “Al-Qaeda is on the run.” A terrorist attack on an American embassy resulting in four dead Americans, including the first murdered ambassador in 30 years, would show the falsity of such bravado, and be a blow to the Obama campaign’s chances of reelection. But a spontaneous uprising, a crowd protesting say – a video – well that was another thing.
So, on the night of the attack, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issues a press release blaming the attack, on a video. The next day she gave a speech, blaming the attack, on a video. Hillary Clinton told the father of one of the Americans killed defending the embassy, that she’d make sure the creator of the video was prosecuted. And then Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador at the UN, was famously sent out to five national T.V. news shows – to blame the attack, on a video.
Now for the smoking gun – actually three of them. The emails, which Hillary had tried so hard to keep from ever coming to light, reveal that within one hour of releasing her press release, blaming the attack not on terrorists, but on a video, Hillary sent an email to her daughter stating “two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al-Qaeda-like group.” Not as a result of people protesting a video, but terrorists.
The second smoking gun. Another email reveals that on the very night of the attack, Hillary had a phone conversation with the President of Libya, in which she informed him that the terrorist group attacking the embassy was Ansar al Sharia, an Al-Qaeda-connected group. No mention of a video.
And the third, and perhaps most damning smoking gun email, relates to a call she made to the Egyptian Prime Minister the day after the attack, in which she told him “we know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack – not a protest.”
Now there were other significant things learned as a result of the Gowdy investigation. We learned for example that multiple requests for additional security from our people on the ground in Benghazi, were completely ignored by Hillary Clinton’s State Department. We learned that even though Hillary ignored her own people in Libya, she routinely communicated by email with Sidney Blumenthal, who had shadowy business deals he was promoting in Libya. And of course we learned about the very existence of Hillary’s personal email server with its accompanying ethical and legal issues.
But most importantly, we learned that the likely Democratic candidate for the presidency this time, Hillary Rodham Clinton, flat-out lied to the American people about a matter of utmost importance – the death of four brave Americans. And even though her socialist opponent in the Democrat primary may be willing to forget about her “damn emails”, voters in the general election may well have a different view, when they’re considering who should lead this nation for the next four or eight years. For the sake of the country, I certainly hope so.
If you saw nothing else of the 11 hour Benghazi hearings, you must see Congressman Jim Jordan’s 11 minute questioning of Hillary Clinton, which you can see below.