Posted on 05/11/2013 9:09:42 PM PDT by smoothsailing
May 11, 2013
A key Benghazi whistle-blower who has allegedly been punished for speaking out against the administration is a registered Democrat who voted for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The lawyer of Gregory Hicks, the former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya who testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday, confirmed the information to The Daily Caller on Saturday.
According to the lawyer, Victoria Toensing, Hicks voted for Clinton during the 2008 primary, and for then-Illinois Sen. Obama in the 2008 general election. He again voted for Obama in 2012.
“The fact is he is a registered Democrat in Virginia. The fact is he voted for Hilary in the primary and Obama and then again for Obama,” Toensing said.
Toensing added that she did not know he was a Democrat until the day before the hearing.
“I’m not interested in that,” she said. “I’m interested in government not abusing its powers.”
Hicks testified before the House Oversight Committee this week regarding the events that took place on Sept. 11, 2012 in Benghazi and recalled how the State Department told him not to cooperate with the congressional investigation into the events, which led to the deaths of four Americans.
Hicks further testified that he has been demoted since Benghazi.
“The job now is a significant … it’s a demotion,” Hicks said before the committee. “Foreign-affairs officer is a designation that is given to our civil service colleagues who are desk officers. So I’ve been effectively demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer.”
The State Department has denied the demotion, saying that Hicks decided to end his assignment in Libya early.
“The Department has not and will not retaliate against Mr. Hicks,” Acting Deputy State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell said during a Thursday press briefing. “As he testified yesterday, he decided to shorten his assignment in Libya following the attacks, in part due to understandable family reasons, and that he has followed standard employment processes.”
According to Toensing, however, the administration is simply lying.
“The State Department is lying — saying he was not demoted. It is almost impossible under law for them to take away anybody’s salary. But they demoted him to a job where he has no meaningful work,” she said. “He had a choice between no job whatsoever and a job that didn’t have any meaningful work. And I say this is like telling a starving man he can have no food or he can have the rotten beef. And if he chooses the rotten beef, is that a choice?”
There are many people that vote democrat that still haven’t realized that in the eyes of that party they are just old white men that are suppose to shut up and die.
In the article itself it says that they “confirmed” the information with Toensing. That means that they already had the information.
It is not hard to see how this might have come about. Media propagandists went out to dig up dirt on the whistleblowers and one of the things they were hoping to find was that Hicks, and the other two are Republicans. Then they could roll that into the narrative that this is all just a political make-believe exercise. When “friends” and colleagues of Hicks said instead that Hicks was a big Hillary fan, but later got on board with Obama they had to go out and check on the information.
The story here does not fit the narrative, but it justifies the time spent. Reporters need to pay their mortgages too.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. I figured from the get go that he leaned leftward simply given his choice of occupation.
Not to change the topic, this little gem just stands out.
“It is almost impossible under law for them to take away anybody’s salary. But they demoted him to a job where he has no meaningful work,”
Hicks further testified that he has been demoted since Benghazi... The State Department has denied the demotion, saying that Hicks decided to end his assignment in Libya early.
Based upon the last paragraph, in the article. skerry needs to go under oath too. No doubt, the circle of corruption is widening.
A good lawyer will always try to eliminate the charge of bias against a witness testifying for their client. What better way to do that in a political case than to show the witness is a supporter of the suspect?
But I do have questions. A lawyer is also supposed to ferret out such biases and other potential problems for her case well in advance of public testimony. Surprises are frowned upon in the legal profession. She should have at least been curious.
Second, not all of his testimony was helpful to the “stand down order” narrative put forward by Griffin’s original sources, and the anonymous witness of Housley. For example, was the jet comandeered or chartered? Bigger picture, if the admin knew some really damaging witnesses were soon to come forward, a reasonable response would be to preempt that testimony with other testimony that has a few diversions designed to lead, not to the true perp, but a a lower level fall guy.
That’s why you want to know all you can about your witness in advance. And that is why I would be concerned to know Hicks voted for Obama AFTER he saw the public falsehoods about the video. Perhaps he is himself involved in the alleged gun running operation, or perhaps he has some other personal motive for presenting the truth selectively.
To be fair, note that the press also told us that Wesley Clark was a Republican even though he later ran for president as a Dem....
And as I recall the same was implied of the teaswilling former ambassador to Gabon Joe Wilson of yellowcake fame in that he was promoted as a Bush appointee being "awarded" an ambasadorship. What wasn't noted is that he was sent to a backwater like Gabon to get him away from Iraq.
Whenever party affiliation is promoted there is some spin going on and 9 out of 10 times it is being done by the left because leftists, being herd animals, really believe in the power of persuasion-by-familiarity or disuasion-by-unfamiliarity.
As Toensing said, she wasn't even aware of it until just recently.
Remember, he wasn’t politically persecuted until some time after Benghazi.
Remember, he wasn’t politically persecuted until some time after Benghazi.
That probably came around the time of Pickering’s Accountability Review Board when the Democrat hacks were trying to complete their cover story.
The jet was chartered from the Libyans IIRC.
That’s my point. How does that square with the anonymous Housley witness describing the jet as “comandeered?” Unless I missed something, and of course I might have, that seems like a contradiction. I am open to an explanation that reconciles both data points, but so far I haven’t run across anything that works.
People like this fellow just prove how totally irrational DIMocRATs are. Never trust a LIB...never trust as moozlum.
Probably ran a background check on him before taking his case. Law firms do that now...and the big firms have the best investigators around
He ought to know that the minions of Satan just can’t allow their underlings to run around telling the truth. Their master doesn’t like it.
“He voted for Obama AFTER Benghazi? He’s a fool and dumb enough not to be believed.”
This reminds me of abuse victims who keep returning to their abusers. Pitiful. I see a beer summit in this man’s future.
Much obliged. “Confirmed” is the clincher.
It is a puzzler that he would vote for the administration that hanged him out to dry. But maybe he was thinking a move or two ahead, to this very matter of testifying against them and the questioning of his motives and loyalties.
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