House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Monday reiterated his position that he will not create a special committee to investigate the 2012 Benghazi attacks, despite pressure from the House Republican caucus to do so.
“The American people have a right to know what happened with regard to ‘Fast and Furious,’ what happened at the IRS, what happened at Benghazi. And there is no one more serious by getting to the bottom of this than I am,” Boehner said on Fox News.
But host Megyn Kelly — whose network has been at the forefront in pushing a whole host of anti-Obama administration Benghazi conspiracy theories — wasn’t satisfied.
“If you are so serious about getting to the bottom of that, why not appoint a select committee where it’s one sort of clearing house for information?” she asked. “Because you’ve got 190 members in the House who are in favor of a select committee and yet, you are over ruling or ignoring the will of your own majority.”
“There are four committees that are investigating Benghazi,” Boehner said, repeating his justification for opposing the special committee. “I see no reason to break up all the work that’s been done and to take months and months and months to create some select committee.” So far the Republican-led House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight committees have all held hearings on the supposed scandal.
“But your own people want it,” Kelly noted, “You got 190 House Republicans whose say they need it.”
“I understand that,” Boehner said. “At some point, that may — that may be required. At this point, it’s not.”
Having spent millions of dollars and countless hours investigating the Obama administration’s nefarious role covering up its alleged mishandling of the Benghazi attacks, the Republicans haven’t come up with anything to implicate the White House in some kind of Watergate-like scandal.
And while it seems like Boehner — and some top GOP staffers on Capitol Hill — are getting the hint that it’s time to move on, Fox News reported late last month that “[r]ank-and-file House Republicans have set up what is described as a ‘working group’ to further review the 2012 Benghazi terror attack” and that the group, led by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) “has kept House GOP leadership in the loop about what it is doing.”
The intra-GOP dispute on Benghazi extends beyond the House. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — mired in a re-election bid and facing a Tea Party primary challenger — has made Benghazi his pet issue, which at times has inflamed some of the right’s most prominent pundits.
Meanwhile, top Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have asked chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) — another leader in the GOP’s Benghazi crusade — to end the seven-month long investigations into the matter.
“To date, the Committee’s investigation has been characterized by wild and unsubstantiated political accusations that turn out to be completely inaccurate after further investigation,” the committee’s Democrats said in a letter to Issa last month. “We believe it is time to end these seemingly endless and unsubstantiated political attacks and direct the Committee’s efforts towards concrete and lasting reforms.”