The White House on Monday bashed the latest Republican effort to investigate the deadly Benghazi attack and hinted it won’t cooperate with the effort.
House Speaker John A. Boehner last week announced he would create a select committee to dig into the Sept. 11, 2012 incident that claimed four American lives. On Monday, he tapped Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and a rising star in the party, to lead the committee.
But White House press secretary Jay Carney dodged questions on whether the administration will fully cooperate with the investigation and said Republicans’ motivation is clearly political.
Mr. Carney repeatedly said the administration has “always cooperated with legitimate oversight” on Benghazi but suggested Mr. Gowdy’s committee doesn’t fall into that category.
“There is a problem when you have so many conspiracy theories that get knocked down by the facts and the adherents to those theories only become more convinced the the facts aren’t what they so clearly are,” the spokesman said.
Mr. Carney added, “At some point you just have to assume Republicans will continue this because it feeds a political objective of some sort, but at the same time you have to ask — what about the American people who want to see Congress actually work for them?”
Thus far, Mr. Carney said, seven congressional hearings on Benghazi have resulted in “13 hearings, 50 member-and-staff briefings and over 25,000 pages of documents.”
All of those things, he added, “have failed to provide Republicans what they have desired politically, which is some proof of a conspiracy.”
Critics say recently unearthed White House internal documents have provided fresh evidence that the Obama administration may have tried to spin the events of the 2012 attack to shield the president from political harm just weeks before the presidential election.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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