“Trey Gowdy’s open endorsement of a campaign opponent of Hillary Clinton’s and his starring role in an ad that compares Marco Rubio to Hillary Clinton removes the last smidge of any perceived objectivity that Gowdy may have had,” said David Brock.  “Gowdy must resign as Chairman of the Benghazi Committee.  He has thrown himself into the middle of the presidential campaign and aligned himself with one of Clinton’s GOP opponents.  This conflict of interest is appalling and the American people are tired of Gowdy playing politics with this tragedy.”

After the last Republican debate on CNBC, pundits and reporters expressed surprise at the outrageous amount of lying and truth-dodging coming from Republican candidates. The New Republic called the last GOP debate a “grotesque festival of lies.” Slate observed that “leading GOP candidates aren’t at war with the press. They just have a problem with the truth.”

While these tactics may have come as a shock to some in the media, Correct The Record has been documenting this truth-dodging from GOP candidates for months. That’s why, ahead of tonight’s debate, Correct The Record has rolled out a new feature, “Plain and Simple,” to help breakdown the issues and explain exactly how it really is.

The first edition of “Plain and Simple” features CTR’s Senior Advisor, former Governor Jennifer Granholm, who breaks down the GOP’s economic lies—claims that are sure to resurface at this evening’s Fox Business/Wall Street Journal-sponsored debate.

Plain and Simple Truth #1: History doesn’t lie: The economy does better with Democrats in office.

“So, interestingly, the Republican Party claims to be the jobs party, the economy party, right? I totally understand why they would want to claim that brand, but it’s just not true.

“What are the facts? You know the old adage, ‘In God we trust, all others bring data.’ Well, here are the facts, here’s the data. In the U.S., I actually went back and looked at the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and I wanted to find out under which presidents, Democrat or Republican, were there more jobs created.

“So, I went back to the start of the JFK presidency. 1961, that’s 54 years from today, backwards. And in that 54 years, Democrats and Republican presidents have served about equal number of years. Democrats one year less. In that 54 years, 89 total, 89 million total jobs were created. Republicans created 32 million of that 89 million, and Democrats 57 million.

“Wait, just make sure you get that. 89 million jobs were created, but under Republican presidents, 32 million jobs were created, under Democratic presidents, 57 million jobs were created. Could this be true? Put another way, Democrats created 2.1 million jobs per year, and Republicans 1.1 million. Almost twice as many jobs created under Democratic presidents.

“Nine of the 10 poorest states in the U.S. are Republican states. 97 of the 100 poorest counties in the U.S. are Republican counties. Or, even if you just look at the last two presidents, President Bush, 2 million net jobs were created, President Obama, 7 million net jobs were created. When I say net, I mean that includes the jobs that were lost when President Obama first came on. There’s been 68 straight months of private sector job creation in the U.S.”

Plain and Simple Truth #2: Don’t believe the hype: GOP tax plans help the wealthy, hurt everyone else.

“What is it about Republican and Democratic policies that are causing this disparity [in job creation]? Well, let’s take a look, for example, at the Republican candidates’ tax plans. They are pretty much the same over history.

“Tax cuts, Republicans say, will create jobs—and these Republican candidates in this election all support tax cuts like eliminating the tax on investments, or reducing it, the capital gains tax, or eliminating the estate tax. Many of them support a so-called flat-tax where everybody pays essentially the same percentage of their income.

“And independent analysts have looked at all of their tax plans and they’ve determined, for example, that Donald Trump’s tax plan would raise the top 1 percent’s after tax earnings more than any other group in the economy. Or, under Marco Rubio’s tax plan, much, much more money would go to rich people. In fact, the top 1 percent on average under Rubio’s plan get tax cuts that are more than 103 times larger than the poorest 20 percent would get. Jeb Bush’s tax package is a huge gift to the wealthy. He intends to slash rates. He wants to scrap the estate tax and, of course, cut the corporate tax rate. And Ben Carson’s flat-tax plan would either have to impose 20 to 25 percent tax across-the-board to raise the same amount of revenue that the federal government currently takes in, or he would see massive deficits as far as the eye could see, or he’d have to massively slash basic services. With his proposal, with Ben Carson’s proposal, middle incomes would get a tax hike and wealthy families would get a tax cut. The wealthy make out like bandits.”

Plain and Simple Truth #3: Tried, tested, and failed: Trickle-down economics does not work.

“Republicans would say the reason why they are doing all of that is because the people at the top of the income ladder are the job creators—and the more you cut their taxes the more money that they will have to invest in creating jobs. And that’s called trickle-down economics—cutting taxes at the top are going to cause the benefits to flow to the rest of us below.

“That’s really nice in theory, but here’s the thing, the wealthiest people in the U.S. make a large chunk of their money from investments. These wealthy people are called the investor class, the 1 percent. They make money with money, by investing it in companies who are doing business all around the world. They invest in global markets.

“Their money is used around the world through stock purchases to create jobs somewhere, but not necessarily in the U.S. So where are those capital gains and estate tax cuts going? They are going to create jobs around the world, not necessarily at home. And what’s the effect of those tax cuts? Well, either you create big deficits at home, or you cut programs that were funded by the tax revenue that are no longer coming in.

“And what are the programs that they cut? Well, often they are investments in our people, in our jobs, in our training, in our infrastructure, in our education system, in partnering with business, our health care.

“In other words, the effect of cutting taxes on the wealthiest, may actually facilitate job creation elsewhere, but it certainly doesn’t invest in our people, our communities, our businesses in the U.S. There is no guarantee of that. And that is why we need policy that rewards job creation in America. And that is why Democratic presidents are better for the economy.

“Lo and behold, it turns out that when you invest in your people and in their education and in our infrastructure, when you make sure that there is a safety net to protect people from falling through, not only is it right morally, but our economy does better, too. And this is one reason why Democratic presidents over the past 54 years have been, by far, the best job creators.”

The false charge you are leveling against Hillary Clinton could be similarly lodged at former CIA Director David Petraeus or former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, who both acknowledged the volatility of the intelligence landscape during those first few hours and days after the attack. It’s interesting, but unsurprising, that your fervent dedication to getting to the bottom of the Benghazi tragedy only extends to the actions of the person against whom you are currently running for president. At least Trey Gowdy invited other witnesses to cover his tracks in his quest to politically undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Brock’s full letter to Rubio is below:

[gview file=”http://correct2016.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/David-Brock-Letter-to-Marco-Rubio.pdf” height=”900px” width=”600px” save=”0″]

As Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi approaches, David Brock sent a letter to Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy admonishing Republicans on the Committee along with a 140-page book detailing the Benghazi Committee’s shameful partisan activities. In his letter, Brock refers to Gowdy’s efforts to take down Hillary Clinton as a ‘McCarthyesque inquisition,’ demanding answers for the continued lies and misinformation being spread at the expense of American taxpayers.

While David Brock eagerly awaits Trey Gowdy’s response to his letter, he looks forward to Hillary Clinton’s testimony, when the Committee will be exposed as the partisan exercise it’s been from the very beginning.

—

October 21, 2015

Chairman Trey Gowdy
House Select Committee on Benghazi
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C., 20515

Dear Chairman Gowdy:

Sir, you have long claimed that your multi-year, multi-million dollar political smear campaign targeting Hillary Clinton is little more than a fact finding mission. Well, we’ve found the facts for you. You’ll find them enclosed, but you may not like what you see.

Attached please find several copies of “The Complete Guide to the Benghazi Select Committee.” These 140 pages attempt to compile every malfeasance, abuse of power, and shameful manipulation of the public trust that you and your GOP colleagues have undertaken in your effort to destroy Hillary Clinton, a thirty-year public servant. Your colleagues, Kevin McCarthy and Richard Hanna, have admitted through their public statements that the Benghazi Committee was created to attack Hillary Clinton. However, this book reveals that you yourself have admitted this truth even more convincingly through your deeds.

The grand irony here, sir, is that in the end it seems the Benghazi Committee may end up doing a lot more damage to you and your fellow congressional Republicans than it does to Hillary Clinton. At the moment, the nation is appalled with the scale of your misdeeds and the utter shamelessness of your misuse of public funds for a partisan goal. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is finding new and reinvigorated public support—in no small part because of the gross overreach of your McCarthyesque inquisition.

It may be too late for you to use the attached research to reign in your reckless behavior, but at the very least you may find the contents instructive. The book tells the story of a man so driven by ambition and partisan vitriol that he would sacrifice his credibility and that of his party in order to lie and manipulate on the public dime. It’s a sad story, and it may not have the ending you expected.

Sincerely,

David Brock
Correct the Record

Washington, DC – David Brock, founder of Correct The Record and author of the New York Times bestseller Killing The Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government, will deliver the remarks below at6pm EST tonight in Philadelphia at the World Affairs Council indicting the political charade known as the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

A livestream will be available here: https://livestream.com/correctrecord/events/4444248 

Remarks at World Affairs Council, Philadelphia
Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Two years ago tomorrow, Media Matters published a book called The Benghazi Hoax in which we exposed how Republicans had twisted the facts, invented charges out of thin air, and dishonored the memory of four brave Americans who died in Benghazi in their attempt to turn a national tragedy into a political weapon.

Last month, I published Killing the Messenger, a book whose subtitle is: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government.  The centerpiece of the book is about the centerpiece of that plot: a partisan witch hunt that began with the despicable politicization of a terrorist attack on the United States and has since spiraled into a desperate fishing expedition and completely out of control effort to destroy Hillary Clinton at all costs.

Tomorrow, Secretary Clinton will testify before the Benghazi Select Committee, as she has been asking to do for months. She’s been called not because of the committee’s concerns about diplomatic security, but about her emails.

Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail account as Secretary of State followed the law and followed precedent. It has nothing to do with Benghazi, as the committee chairman himself has admitted.

But to Republicans, it doesn’t matter.  As I detail in Killing the Messenger, the Benghazi investigation was never about getting to the bottom of what actually happened.  It was always a dirt-digging operation, a wild search for some hint of scandal that could stop Barack Obama from being re-elected, and, when that failed, stop Hillary Clinton from succeeding him.

And in the days that followed my book’s release, Republicans started to finally admit it.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn’t just acknowledge the Benghazi hoax, he boasted about it.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he crowed.  “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee.  What are her numbers today?  Her numbers are dropping.” The GOP’s goal, McCarthy added in his mangled English, was to paint Clinton as “untrustable.”

Then another Republican Congressman, Richard Hanna, confessed that the committee was “designed to go after” Hillary.

And last week, Republican officials told the New York Times that the committee began focusing on e-mails because Speaker of the House John Boehner thought it was “a way to keep the issue alive and to cause political problems for her campaign.”

Meanwhile, a whistleblower emerged from within the committee staff: a former investigator, Air Force Reserve officer, and self-described conservative Republican named Bradley Podliska.

Major Podliska told CNN of the absurdity of life on the Benghazi committee.  Staffers regularly wasted time online and sometimes drank on the job.  Several joined a “gun buying club,” whiling away the hours at the office designing personalized weapons – “chrome-plated, monogrammed, Tiffany-style Glock 9-millimeters,” to be exact.

He also reported that the committee “trained its sights almost exclusively on Clinton” following news reports on her emails.  And he revealed that he had been fired for refusing to go along – which would make his firing unlawful.

The committee responded by attacking Podliska as a “lousy employee” and divulging details of his employment – which is also against the law, in this case the Congressional Accountability Act, which prohibited the committee from making public the details of the ongoing mediation surrounding Podliska’s firing.

Indeed, this response was just the kind of thing you’d expect from a political war room, which is exactly what the Benghazi Select Committee is.

Over its 17 months in operation – longer than the investigations into the Kennedy assassination, the Iran-Contra scandal, or even Watergate – the committee has taken on a role as a taxpayer-funded arm of the Republican National Committee, spending $4.6 million of your money and careening from subject to subject in an attempt to manufacture scandal.

Well, they succeeded, alright. As MSNBC’s Steve Benen wrote, “The Benghazi Committee isn’t investigating a scandal. The Benghazi Committee is the scandal.” What’s been discovered so far is an abuse of Congressional power, leaking and lying to the press, and alleged violations of several laws and Congressional rules. And the perpetrator is none other than the chairman of this sham investigation, Trey Gowdy.

Now, if you want to know how we got here, you have to go all the way back to the 1970s.

The Watergate scandal still sticks in Republicans’ craw.  And they’ve been trying to avenge it ever since.

As many of you know, I was working deep in the heart of the vast right-wing conspiracy when Bill Clinton rose to national prominence during the 1992 campaign.  Funded by the billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, we were determined to find the scandal that would bring down this dynamic young Democrat – or, failing that, invent one.

Conservatives managed to get a story written in the New York Times alleging that the Clintons had given improper favors to their investment partner in a failed land deal called Whitewater.

The story didn’t show any wrongdoing by the Clintons, and a CNN analysis would later identify nineteen separate errors of fact in it.

But when Bill Clinton became president, Republicans saw it as an opportunity to even the score at one disgraced president per side.  And, hey, if they could take down his formidable wife at the same time?  Even better.

Fact finding wasn’t the goal. Whitewater was about the journey, not the destination: an investigation would mean getting subpoena power to ask all manner of questions, request all manner of documents, spread innuendo, leak juicy factoids to friendly or gullible reporters – and then hold up those same stories as proof that the investigation needed to continue, or even widen.

That’s how the Whitewater story gave birth to a highly-politicized $70 million federal investigation of the Clintons, led by an overzealous prosecutor, Ken Starr.  Along the way, Starr found plenty of excuses to continually expand his failed investigation until he could gin up spurious impeachment charges.

Which, of course, was the goal from the beginning.  From Day One, it was a search for a crime that could fit the punishment Republicans had already resolved to impose.

More than a decade later came the night of September 11, 2012, and news of an attack on an American diplomatic facility in Libya.

Note that there had been 64 attacks on American diplomatic targets overseas during the Bush administration – and Democrats hadn’t used any of them to play politics.

In fact, never before – dating back to Ronald Reagan – had a tragedy like this been fodder for a political attack from either party.  But Mitt Romney’s campaign was desperate.

And so, on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and well before all the facts were in regarding the unfolding events in Libya, Romney flat out accused the president of “sympathizing” with terrorists. How disgraceful.

And then the entire right-wing machine revved up to turn Benghazi into the magic bullet that would wreck the Obama administration.

Indeed, there is an untold back story to today’s ill-conceived and unsavory GOP smear tactics. After the 2010 midterms, a shadowy organization called Groundswell, a sort of coordinating body for a whole host of right-wing groups led the Heritage Foundation’s Ginni Thomas – the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – began secretly meeting.  A recording of the group’s deliberations, published by Mother Jones, shows that, after the Benghazi attack, they began agitating for a special Congressional investigation. They formed the Benghazi Action Committee to push that agenda forward.  On March 5, 2014, the activists signed a letter to Boehner urging the appointment of a select committee, which the speaker did, on May 2^nd.

Among members of the BAC was Judicial Watch, a right-wing group that for years, going back to the 1990s, has engaged in a campaign of legal terrorism against the Clintons, bombarding them with frivolous lawsuits and document demands.

Also in the coalition was a group called the Citizens’ Committee on Benghazi, a project of the long-time right-wing media watchdog Accuracy in Media.  One of its board members was Wayne Simmons, who you may have seen on Fox News touting his 27 years of CIA experience to demand Congressional action on Benghazi. You won’t be seeing Simmons anymore, though – last week, he was arrested for fraud. Simmons never worked for the CIA.

Speaking of Fox, the network was also an important driver of events, airing 1,098 evening segments on Benghazi in the first twenty months after the attacks. Senator John McCain proclaimed that Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes “deserves credit” for the Benghazi investigation, and Senator Lindsay Graham cheered, “Thank God for Fox!”

Never mind that by the spring of 2014, six Congressional committees had released reports detailing the results of their exhaustive investigations.  Two other committees had also held hearings.  And, that fall, the Republican House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence would release its own report, making it the ninth congressional committees to investigate the attacks.

And not one of them found any evidence to verify the far-flung theories of the far right.  There was no stand-down order that prevented the saving of lives, no deliberate effort to mislead the public about the motive behind the attack, no muzzled whistleblowers, no cover-up – nothing.

More than 30 hearings, 200 witnesses, eleven published reports totaling nearly 800 pages, and millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars – the most recent estimate is at least $20 million overall – and the Republicans still hadn’t found any wrongdoing.

In her prior Congressional testimony, in January 2013, Clinton said she took responsibility for the events in Libya, took immediate action to guard against such attacks in the future, and was transparent throughout, even releasing to the public the full report of State’s Accountability Review Board investigation.  Even a Fox News commentator concluded she “hit the ball out of the park.”

Yet, clearly, it was time for yet another Benghazi committee. But why?

From the moment she left the State Department, Republicans knew what Democrats also knew – that Clinton would be an almost unprecedentedly strong candidate, and, as president, would implement an ambitious progressive vision to move the country forward.

So three and a half years before Election Day, with so much unknown about how the race would shape up, Republicans knew one thing: They really, really didn’t want to run against Hillary. So they moved to take her down.

The right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch, the Richard Mellon Scaifes of our time, pledged to spend whatever it took from their bottomless treasure chest to defeat Hillary.

One thing I’ll say about the Koch Brothers: they plan ahead. They groomed Trey Gowdy for his star turn and they couldn’t have found themselves a better pawn to serve as this generation’s Ken Starr.

Gowdy owes his political livelihood to the Koch brothers.  Five years ago, when an incumbent Republican Congressman from South Carolina named Bob Inglis wandered off the reservation by acknowledging that climate change is a real threat, the Kochs backed Gowdy – then a County Solicitor – to run against Inglis in a primary, helping him win a stunning upset victory.

They’ve gotten their money’s worth.  In 2012, Gowdy was one of just 40 members of the House to receive a 100 percent score from the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity, a perfect score he has maintained throughout this Congress, as well.  He backed measures to expand offshore drilling –  including off the coast of South Carolina – a key Koch priority.  And, to this day, the Kochs remain his second-largest career donor.

So Gowdy was the ideal candidate to run this show trial and help achieve the Kochs’ number-one goal: keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House.

That was Gowdy’s mission from Day One, one that has elevated his reputation in Republican ranks.

Conservative operative Bill Kristol has declared Gowdy “the Most Valuable Republican of the 2016 election cycle so far.”  In the last few weeks, Gowdy was being floated as a candidate to move up to Majority Leader or even Speaker.  Donald Trump said he’d make Gowdy his Attorney General, and Lindsey Graham said he should be on the Supreme Court someday.  There was even talk about Gowdy ending up on a presidential ticket.  Quite a rise from County Solicitor in just five years.

Initially, Chairman Gowdy pledged to run a non-partisan fact-finding inquiry.  “I have no friends to reward,” he said, “and no foes to punish.  We’re going to go wherever the facts take us.”

This was a lie.

Before he was even appointed, and long before Kevin McCarthy let the cat out of the bag, Gowdy sat down for a little-noticed interview with none other than Ginni Thomas, a key player in the original effort to politicize Benghazi, published in the right-wing Daily Caller.  In it, Gowdy pre-judged the entire inquiry, stating flatly that he believed Hillary Clinton had committed unspecified crimes, and that he was certain she was ready to perjure herself before Congress.

In other words, the fix was in from the first bang of his gavel.

For example: Six months into the committee’s work, Democratic Ranking Member Elijah Cummings wrote to Gowdy that Democrats were being wrongly excluded, pointing to at least five witness interviews that took place without Democratic members or staff allowed to be present.

Moreover, Cummings noted that Gowdy was consistently downplaying or outright hiding information gained from these secret interviews that might undermine his trumped-up case against Clinton.

Gowdy has steadfastly refused to adopt committee rules that give the Democratic minority a voice in its proceedings – or even a heads-up about what Republican members and staff are doing.

In addition, Gowdy established a pattern of abusing his authority to issue subpoenas without debate, and even without a vote, dictating the course of the investigation himself without input from the Democratic minority.

Meanwhile, Gowdy consistently refused to provide full public transcripts of secret witness interviews, or even allow for a committee vote on disclosing them.  Instead, he and his henchmen leaked cherry-picked excerpts to skew the news.

Committee leaks, in fact, were behind two blockbuster New York Times stories – one suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account may have violated federal law, and the other that a federal criminal investigation into her e-mail practices was underway.  Both of these stories were based on false information, and had to be corrected or retracted. Yet both of them dominated the news cycle and set off fevered speculation about the imminent collapse of Hillary’s presidential hopes.

Earlier this month, Gowdy made a new accusation against Clinton, alleging that she had received the name of a CIA informant in an e-mail from former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.  “Armed with that information,” Gowdy charged, “she forwarded that e-mail to a colleague – debunking her claim that she never sent any classified information from her private e-mail address.”

Gowdy made sure to underscore that “the name of a human source is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but human lives.”  He released a copy of the e-mail with the name of the individual in question redacted, making it look even more like Hillary was sharing classified information over her private e-mail.

Gowdy got the headlines he wanted – such as “Clinton Burns CIA Libya Contact” – but he didn’t get his facts straight.  The CIA, which Gowdy hadn’t bothered to ask about the e-mail, slapped down Gowdy’s claim as false, saying that in fact the information in that e-mail was not classified at all.  It turns out, Gowdy had doctored the document, inventing his own reasons for the redactions in order to defame Clinton.

Gowdy’s false claims were made in a communication to members of Congress, making him vulnerable to a referral to the Department of Justice for the criminal act of lying to Congress.

By now, Trey Gowdy is very far away from his original mission.

Indeed, last week, the New York Times reported that eight months after Gowdy announced he planned to hold a dozen interviews with intelligence and national security officials, only one has actually been conducted.  Gowdy had also proposed eleven public hearings about the attacks; not one has taken place.

Instead, in an effort to shift the focus from Benghazi to Hillary’s email, the committee has demanded testimony from at least 18 former Clinton staffers, including three speechwriters and the IT guy who maintained Hillary’s server.

And last week, the Huffington Post noticed something else peculiar.

The Benghazi Select Committee has held a total of 54 witness interviews, but Gowdy himself has showed up for fewer than ten.  He skipped hearings featuring testimony from top intelligence officials.  He no-showed hearings featuring survivors of the attacks, eyewitnesses to the events the committee was supposed to be investigating.  In fact, the only times Gowdy bothered to show up were when those close to Clinton were testifying.

One of Gowdy’s very first subpoenas went to Sidney Blumenthal, who was grilled in a closed deposition for nine hours. The committee has been pursuing a loony conspiracy theory that Blumenthal instigated the war in Libya and that he did it in order to profit.  But it turns out that Gowdy is lying about a humanitarian aid idea, an idea that was raised in the middle of the war, never came to pass, and no money ever changed hands.  Secretary Clinton is expected to be quizzed on all this tomorrow, even though Blumenthal was asked—and he answered—every question put to him about it.

The committee also pursued a wholly out of bounds line of questioning about Blumenthal’s political activities and relationships.

According to a count of the questions Blumenthal was asked, made public by Democrats on the committee, Blumenthal fielded more than 160 questions about his relationship and communications with the Clintons; more than 50 questions about the Clinton Foundation, for which Blumenthal had consulted; and more than 45 questions about the inner workings of the organizations I run, for which Blumenthal works, and which have been critical of the committee. Blumenthal was asked zero questions about the U.S. presence and personnel in Benghazi.

It’s no wonder that Gowdy refuses to release the transcript of Blumenthal’s deposition.

Just the other day, Gowdy, trying to deflect questions about the committee’s partisanship, appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation and claimed he wasn’t at all interested in the Clinton Foundation, which obviously has nothing to do with Benghazi. Yet he asked Blumenthal more than 50 questions about it. Simply put, Gowdy was lying through his teeth.

Unfortunately for Trey Gowdy, the press is starting to wake up to his shenanigans.  The New York Times ran an editorial two weeks ago, declaring his committee “an insult to the memory of four slain Americans,” and calling for it to be shut down.

Yesterday, on CNN, another committee member, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, touted the emails of the Ambassador in Libya who lost his life in the Benghazi attacks as a new revelation the committee will release tomorrow.  But the anchor, Chris Cuomo, pointed out that the emails had been available to the Accountability Review Board three years ago.  Westmoreland then impugned the integrity of the Board, which was headed by two officials who had served Republican administrations in high posts.

And so it goes.  To be sure, there’s no reason to keep this farce going. With Secretary Clinton scheduled to testify tomorrow, however, it may be too late in the day for the committee to disband altogether. But if the public is to have any confidence in this committee’s findings, Gowdy should resign his chairmanship immediately. Gowdy must go.

Next, there ought to be an investigation into the Benghazi hoax itself. And Gowdy should spend his freed up time as the star witness.

For example: House rules prohibit the use of official resources for campaign or political purposes.  If Gowdy used $4.6 million to further the aims of the Republican National Committee, he is guilty of an extremely serious, career-ending ethics violation.

And when we’re done with that investigation, let’s take a look at the suspicious activities of some of the right-wing groups devoted to defeating Hillary in 2016 that seemed to be awfully in sync with Gowdy’s committee.

We still don’t know the details of the committee’s interactions with partisan Republican groups hyping the pseudo-scandal in their own communications.  But there are some tantalizing clues. The chairman of the Benghazi Action Committee referred to his group as an “asset” of the committee’s.

In September 2014, a group called Stop Hillary PAC delivered more than 260,000 signatures to the committee demanding that Gowdy subpoena Hillary to testify.  The next day, Gowdy began the process to do just that.  Then the PAC emailed its list soliciting campaign funds to “support Trey Gowdy.” Sounds like the sort of thing the Federal Elections Commission might be interested in.

In April 2015, Stop Hillary PAC ran ads soliciting contributions using Gowdy’s name and picture and identifying him as chairman of the Benghazi committee.  A month later, the group delivered another petition to Gowdy “to express our gratitude and support.”

As The Washington Post reported, the PAC’s treasurer, Dan Backer, previously served as treasurer of a now-defunct fundraising committee affiliated with Gowdy. He is also treasurer of three other political action committees that each donated to Gowdy’s campaign in May.

Last Friday, Gowdy, caught red-handed, returned the donations.

And why stop there?  The misuse of taxpayer dollars doesn’t just violate House ethics rules, it may violate federal law.  In 1993, a former House employee pled guilty to a charge of theft of government property after he was caught doing campaign work on the taxpayers’ dime.  And I can’t imagine the damage to taxpayers then was even close to $4.6 million.

Trey Gowdy may be the Ken Starr of his generation.  But even that may be too generous an assessment of his legacy.

Sixty years ago, there was another Republican legislator who turned an oversight investigation into a nightmarish political travesty, trampling on Constitutional rights and engaging in repeated and serious abuses of power in his quest to destroy his perceived enemies.

When the extent of his malfeasance was exposed, he was censured by the Senate, shunned by his own party, and sent home to live out the rest of his days in infamy.

Joseph McCarthy managed to find a communist or two.  All Gowdy has done is besmirch the memory of four dead Americans while betraying the public trust.

Gowdy deserves to sit down to a banquet of consequences.  Our country simply cannot function if this is how one of the two major political parties chooses to compete for power.

Sixty years after McCarthy disgraced the Senate, we remember him as an ugly example of Congressional power run amok for partisan gain, never to be repeated.

Let’s hope it doesn’t take sixty years for Trey Gowdy and the rest of the Benghazi hoaxsters to meet the same fate.

Thank you.

###

September 30, 2015

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C., 20515

Dear Representative McCarthy:

Sir, yesterday you displayed a level of candor not seen in many politicians.  However, by admitting – in fact sir by bragging – that the House Select Committee on Benghazi is little more than a partisan cudgel intended to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, you have pulled back the curtain on your own party’s abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer funds to advance a nakedly political goal.

Your admission that the work of the taxpayer funded Benghazi Select Committee had only one goal in mind – destroying Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions – must have consequences.  I have already called, publicly, for the Benghazi Committee to be disbanded immediately and for the Office of Congressional Ethics to open an investigation into the scope of your majority’s shameless abuse of the public trust.

Yet there must be an even broader recognition of the wrong that you, personally, have done.

Mr. McCarthy, you are widely-reported to be the next in line for the Speakership—a role that is tasked with representing the whole of the House of Representatives. However, it’s abundantly clear that you intend to run your office like an annex of the Republican National Committee and that you are even willing to use public money to undertake political dirty work against your partisan opponents. Frankly, that is evidence enough that you are unfit to lead.  As such, you should withdraw from consideration as Speaker immediately and make way for someone whose sense of decency and national service isn’t completely overwhelmed by partisan ambition.

It’s clear now from every available fact that Hillary Clinton is innocent of any wrongdoing, yet you have tried to smear a lifelong public servant with lies and innuendo for nothing more than partisan gain.  Shame on you sir.  For the good of the country and credibility of the House of Representatives shut down the Benghazi Committee and end your campaign for Speaker.

Sincerely,

David Brock
Correct the Record

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