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WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) today, in a 37 page letter to House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy, detailed State Department efforts to obstruct the Congressional investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks. “In response to your request, I am providing detailed background information regarding the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s outstanding Benghazi-related document requests to the Executive Branch, as well as the status of any Benghazi-related production and compliance issues,” wrote Issa to Gowdy. “To be precise, the Department has not provided a full and complete response to two subpoenas,...

Has President Obama’s use of the “pen and phone” to circumvent Congress gotten out of hand? Some members of the GOP seem to think so. [...] a mounting chorus of Republicans are calling for impeachment. Here’s a list of the high-profile Republicans who want to kick the president out of office:

Military officers testified that there was no “stand-down order” that held back military assets that could have saved the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans killed at a diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. Their testimony undercut the contention of Republican lawmakers. The “stand-down” theory centers on a Special Operations team—a detachment leader, a medic, a communications expert and a weapons operator with his foot in a cast—that was stopped from flying from Tripoli to Benghazi after the attacks of Sept. 11-12, 2012, had ended. Instead, it was instructed to help protect and care for those being evacuated...

WASHINGTON— The House Armed Services Committee today released nine declassified transcripts of interviews jointly conducted by the Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in connection with the September 11, 2012 attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. These classified interviews were undertaken as part of HASC’s examination of the actions of the Department of Defense before, during, and after the attack. These interviews were conducted between January and April 2014. The transcripts were declassified by the Department of Defense at HASC’s request.

It's hard to keep up with the social and political hurly-burly of the Middle East, but U.S. TV producer Howard Gordon got a hit out of it with "Homeland" and hopes to do the same with new series "Tyrant", even if it requires last-minute tweaks. While fellow Americans celebrated over the July 4 weekend, Gordon was back in Israel for his latest whirlwind visit to fine-tune upcoming episodes, based on feedback he has received about the series set in a Middle Eastern dictatorship buffeted by demands for change arising from the Arab Spring.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newly revealed testimony from top military commanders involved in the U.S. response to the Benghazi attacks suggests that the perpetrators of a second, dawn attack on a CIA complex probably were different from those who penetrated the U.S. diplomatic mission the evening before.

"I called it…John Brennan’s “iron claw”: he came down on Director Petraeus with an “iron claw” to prevent him from investigating what appears to have been John Brennan’s own arms trafficking. Look, when the president’s top advisor for counterterrorism engages in operational activity overseas — because that’s what this appears to be — that is a violation of the National Security Act of 1947. That’s exactly what they tried to convict Oliver North of doing during the Iran-Contra affair. The biggest difference of course between Iran-Contra and Benghazi is that nobody died during the Iran-Contra affair, and here there are...

Sarah Palin on Tuesday joined a growing chorus of Republicans calling for the impeachment of President Obama, writing in a Breitbart op-ed that the influx of young illegal immigrants over the southern border "is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, 'no mas.' " Mixed/careless metaphors aside, this is nothing but bad news for Republicans — especially four months until the 2014 election. Palin is hardly the first GOP politician to raise the issue of impeachment over the past couple years. Others include Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Reps. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.),...

There are no Benghazi hearings on the House calendar, but the silence doesn’t mean the investigation is fading away. Rep. Trey Gowdy is launching a special committee to wrangle a probe that’s sprawled across the jurisdictions of multiple headline-hungry committee chairmen. And while the South Carolina Republican isn’t committing to specifics, like whether there will be public hearings with high-profile witnesses like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his methodical approach could help the GOP savor a scandal that has at times looked more like a political sideshow. “No one [has] defended the five-minute questioning [process] as the most calculated...

Ed Klein’s new book, “Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas” has been making waves for its many salacious details — for example Klein’s assertion that there is a deep rift between Michelle Obama and the president such that they slept in separate bedrooms at Martha’s Vineyard (and continue to do so in the White House). However, the broader purpose of the book is to show that there is a heated battle going on — dating back to the brutal primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election cycle — that continues to manifest itself...

Classified info at compound required U.S. Marine protection Did the State Department under Hillary Clinton deliberately refuse to classify what has been described as sensitive information housed at the U.S. special mission in Benghazi? The storage of any officially classified information in the compound would have required the deployment of the U.S. Marine Corps Embassy Security Group for protection. Instead, external security at the facility was provided by unarmed local Libyan guards. Armed members of the Martyrs of the February 17th Brigades served as the official quick-reaction force that worked within the compound. The Brigade is an offshoot of the...

Court documents filed by the U.S. Justice Department in the criminal case against Benghazi attack suspect Ahmed Abu Khatallah provide unprecedented details about the evolution of the assault and further shatter the Obama administration's initial claim that it sprouted from protests over an anti-Islam film. The narrative that the video played a role continues to live on, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying recently that some of the attackers may indeed have been influenced by the online video. But the Justice Department's court filings make clear that at least those spearheading the attack were part of a "conspiracy,"...

What happens when the president who has politicized law-enforcement to a degree unprecedented in American history meets a terrorist responsible for killing Americans he has recklessly failed to protect, decimating his pretensions about “decimating” al-Qaeda? What happens is: You get the most politicized terrorism indictment ever produced by the Justice Department. Behold United States v. Khatallah, Case No. 14 Crim. 141, quietly unsealed in a Washington courtroom last Saturday while the country dozed off into summer-vacation mode. Ahmed Abu Khatallah, of course, is the only suspect apprehended in connection with the Benghazi massacre, a terrorist attack on a still-mysterious U.S....

Editor's note: This column originally appeared in the July issue of Townhall Magazine. Despite President Obama’s promise of an “unprecedented level of openness in government,” the American people have unfortunately become accustomed to a new normal over the past six years: incompetence, scandal, and misconduct. When news breaks about freshly exposed corruption, the reaction of far too many is, “Unbelievable, but I’m not surprised.” Since Obama took office in 2009, we’ve witnessed Operation Fast and Furious, Benghazi, Department of Justice spying on reporters and their families, IRS targeting of conservatives, the HealthCare.gov debacle, the GSA conference scandal, Solyndra, veterans dying...

Believe it or not, it was 10 years ago this month that Barack Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate, introduced himself to America with a speech that shook the Fleet Center in Boston. The main theme of that Democratic convention was the litany of George W. Bush's failures — an unpopular and unending war in Iraq, a faltering image abroad, a stagnating middle class. Obama gave eloquent voice to those frustrations, arguing that all of them could be addressed if only we reunited the electorate. Probably Obama himself would not have guessed then that he would ascend to...

Obama gave this bloodthirsty Libyan jihad murderer the full protection of a US citizen. Ahmed Abu Khatallah was mirandized and has since clamped down and shut up, which was Obama’s objective all along. In the continuing cover-up of the Benghazi jihad murderers and Obama’s feckless and reckless abandonment of our people, Obama’s main objective is to cover up what really happened that night on his watch. This Libyan devout jihadi was read his Miranda rights — which give him the right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination, a U.S. official told CNN. “I have serious concerns that conducting a rushed...

A legal filing prosecutors submitted in advance of a hearing set in federal court in Washington on Wednesday for Libyan militia leader Ahmed Abu Khatallah is vague about his role in the 2012 attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. Abu Khatallah was captured in Benghazi last month by U.S. military special forces and FBI personnel. He was brought across the Atlantic in a Navy ship before being helicoptered into Washington on Saturday morning for an arraignment in federal court on an indictment charging him with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists in connection...

Computers stolen from the U.S. Consulate during the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack may have contained sensitive information, jeopardizing the lives of locals and allowing classified material to fall into the wrong hands. Sources in Washington and Libya told Fox News on Tuesday that the marauders got away with computers with hard drives that included the names of all the users, among other information. A Libyan eyewitness said the terrorists took computers, computer devices, M-16 rifles and a suitcase, Washington investigators confirmed to Fox News. Former CIA officer Charles Faddis called the theft a “huge deal” and “a front-burner thing,” saying...

The Obama administration’s just-released criminal complaint against the alleged mastermind of the Benghazi terrorist attacks provides a final contradiction to its own evolving explanations for what happened that day. The Justice Department’s indictment spells out a calculated conspiracy by Ahmed Abu Khatallah and associates to attack the U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA annex, which killed four Americans. The indictment might be viewed as a death knell for a theory that the attack resulted from a spontaneous protest against a U.S.-produced video. Now in custody, Khatallah was a commander of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and is himself...

Hillary Clinton’s popularity has been in steep decline recently, and the reduction in her fan base is well deserved. Clinton was a big player in the Benghazi cover up, despite her best efforts to escape scrutiny for her role in the tragedy. The former Secretary of State has lied repeatedly about the events that took place that night, and soon she will be forced to come clean about her actions if Rep. Trey Gowdy has anything to say about it. The real horror of Benghazi is that Clinton took no action to save the lives of American citizens who were...