Jay Carney: I don’t know if we’ll cooperate with the Benghazi select committee

Hot Air ^ | May 5, 2014 | Allahpundit

[2ndDivisionVet]

Lot o’ strategizin’ happening today vis-a-vis the committee, and not just on the GOP side. Greg Sargent hears from a source on the Hill that Pelosi and company are trying to decide whether to boycott.

A House Dem leadership aide points out that there is precedent for such a boycott. Back in 2005, House Dem leaders declined to participate in GOP hearings into what went wrong with the Bush administration’s response to the Katrina disaster, arguing that Republicans had set up the committee in a way that ensured it would not conduct a serious probe into what happened.

The House Dem leadership aide notes that Dems are looking at their 2005 response as a possible model on how to respond to the new Benghazi committee, though no decisions have been made.

“There is deep concern in the Caucus that participation in this sham committee, like the 2005 Katrina committee, would serve to legitimize what has and by all signs will continue to be a political operation,” the Dem leadership aide tells me.

Steny Hoyer told Politico today that they haven’t decided what to do yet. I made the case for why boycotting is smart-ish in the last post; if your goal is to delegitimize the proceedings, there’s no clearer way to make that point (especially to your friends in the media, who undoubtedly share your contempt for this) than to skip it entirely. The counterargument is that the average low-information voter watching soundbites of the day’s hearings at 10 p.m. on cable either won’t know or won’t care about the boycott. All he’ll know is that Trey Gowdy is pounding the table and seems utterly convinced that there’s a cover-up, and that the witness he’s grilling seems shifty and nervous. If you’re a Dem, maybe it’s better to have people on the committee pounding the table about what a farce this all is so that the news networks have something for the “counterpoint” part of the soundbite highlight reel.

What Democrats are really trying to do right now, I think, is calculate the odds that there’s something hugely damaging out there that might be uncovered by the committee — in other words, the odds that the GOP’s been right about Benghazi all along. Looks to me like they’re 90 percent sure that this’ll be a nothingburger, but that remaining 10 percent carries a big risk. Namely, if they participate in the committee, spend three weeks screeching that it’s a sham and an insult to the president, and then a smoking gun turns up, they’ll be as humiliated as Obama is. That’s another reason to boycott, to keep their distance not only from a committee that their base finds dubious but to keep their distance from any findings that might truly hurt O. Or would their absence actually backfire by signaling to the public that they didn’t care enough to find the truth? Political actors don’t like uncertainty and Pelosi’s dealing with a lot of uncertainty right now.

Exit question for legal eagles: What would it mean for the White House to not “cooperate” with the committee? I assume that means claiming executive privilege over documents that Gowdy wants, which has worked so far in other contexts to hinder GOP investigations but would look awfully shady in this case, especially with the White House bleating that this is all much ado about nothing. Would they, or could they, refuse to send witnesses too? Even Kerry and Hillary routinely appear/appeared before Congress. It’d look suspicious if the key players suddenly clammed up now.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

[brownsfan]

“Fine. Let America learn once and for all that there was a coup on our gov’t in 2008 and they answer to NO ONE.”

America would have to pay attention in order to learn that lesson.

[originalbuckeye]

Let’s hope that most Americans actually recognize the arrogance and the lies. Big Media is promoting the lies as truth.

[Ingtar]

Nothing different about this. When have they ever cooperated?

[Servant of the Cross]

Of course they won’t cooperate with the Select Committee either. The ONLY reason there is a Select Committee is because the WH obstructed and didn’t cooperate with previous committees by withholding documents and evidence which had been subpoenaed.

[Political Junkie Too]

I assume that means claiming executive privilege over documents that Gowdy wants, which has worked so far in other contexts to hinder GOP investigations...

I think that SCOTUS already ruled with Clinton that executive privilege is not a blanket privilege. In order for the President to invoke executive privilege, it has to be something that he was a party to, not just his aides talking to each other or aides to external agencies.

If Obama were to invoke executive privilege, it would be an admission that he was directly involved.

-PJ

[fhayek]

They should bring in families members of those killed at Benghazi. That would put a human face on what happened (and how they were lied to), two years ago, dude.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Didn't the original guy who they're caricaturing meet his end at the guillotine?

[old curmudgeon]

There is something really big behind the Benghazi cover up, so big that the dims are absolutely terrified.

[Dick Bachert]

Trey better watch his six. The klintoons have bodies stacked around the like so much cord wood. Then there’s obozo who recently joked that he was “good at killing people.” If Trey Gowdy turns up with three bullets in his head and it’s ruled “suicide”, there WILL be a revolution.

[LucianOfSamasota]

They don’t comply with Congressional subpena’s at all...ever...

[Jagdgewehr]

Nothing but lawless scum.

Blatant lawless scum. The only cure for this ill is an uprising of one kind or another.

[FreedBird]

The MSM decided the President does not have to do anything but spend tax money, redistribute tax money and go play golf and take vacations.

[combat_boots]

Of course there is.

An AWOL CIC.

All Americans should fear that at any time, their duly appointed and elected officials will abandon us for any reason, including to die or be imprisoned without recourse.

[2ndDivisionVet]

You mean the fact that this administration was funneling weapons and explosives to al Qaeda?

[Billthedrill]

Carney does remind me of Jar Jar Binks these days - the one guy in the flick that everybody is fantasizing a horrible fate for. Hope Jar Jar isn’t offended by the comparison.

[Blood of Tyrants]

If the Rats do decide to attend, they will be acting as counsel for the WH and will do everything in their power to obfuscate and cover up for Obummer.

[Liz]

The Democrats' high-pitched "dissembling and obfuscating"
on Benghazi has a medical purpose---if they don't save
Hillary's ***....they're toast.

" C'mon guys. Gimme a break. I'm on life support, here.
If we don't save Hillary's ***, I'm looking at Ft Marcy Park."

[Andy from Chapel Hill]

CIA Whistleblower Posts 12 Questions about Benghazi Is the United States secretly arming and supporting various factions of the Syrian Rebels with high caliber impact weapons from The United States arsenals? Is the United States little-known Direct Commercial Sales Program, also known as ʻ‘The Blue Lantern Report”, being used as a ʻ‘cutoutʼ’ to secretly aid both sides of a Middle Eastern civil war? Is America again playing both sides against the middle for corporate gain as previously demonstrated by the Cuban Project of the fifties and sixties, as well as the Iran Contra fiasco of the eighties and the South American—Mexican Drug Wars of the nineties?It has been established via some field reports from the Middle East and some isolated media reports that the Direct Commercial Sales Program (DCSP), an American international program, which legally allows the United States to sell weapons to a host of foreign countries without monitoring those weapons after leaving our arsenals, stockpiles, and jurisdiction, has shipped High Impact weapons to Syrian Rebels during the last two years. I have to ask. What happens to those weapons after legally being sold via this program and they leave our control? Are they being monitored, traced, certified, and inventoried after arriving in other countries? Will our troops one day again face these American-made weapons on some foreign battlefield? Is this Direct Commercial Sales program a secret cash cow for many US Corporations, International arms merchants, its insiders, or affiliates? Is it possible this could be another ʻ‘off-‐‑the-‐‑booksʼ’ secret covert operation ran by the CIA’s Special Tactical Unit, similar to the Iran‑Contra operations of the eighties and the old Cuban projects of the fifties and sixties, where we supplied both sides weapons and escalated the conflict for personal and corporate gain? Could we be selling and supplying dangerous high impact weapons, while aiding and financing both sides of a Civil War in Syria? Could we be escalating the Middle East conflict either knowingly or unintentionally providing weapons to both sides of the Syrian conflict? These are simple questions. I’m just asking: Did our Ambassador and others, weeks before they were murdered, notify our State Department and CIA that Syrian Rebels had obtained US Weapons, including “Stinger missiles’ from Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, shipped from CIA safe houses? Were they told to “Stand Down”?

[Andy from Chapel Hill]

Apologies for the lack of paragraph indents!

[Liz]

MURDER IN BENGHAZI--brought to you by Obama's braindead NSA advisers and Hillary's all-girl State Dept team.

As Susan Rice and Tommy Vietor amply demonstrated, Obama's national security team is surpassed in braindeadness only by Hillary's all-girl State Dept team.

Mmmmmm....when the national security team couples w/ the State Dept team at "meet and greet" night, NSA advisor Tommy-boy gets his pick of the State Dept chicks. Luckily he's still got the press van he used to drive w/ a learner's permit....his first job w/ Obama, before he was given US ntl security clearance.

Little Tommy’s interview with Brett Baier on what happened the night of the attack on Benghazi went viral, and has aroused strong reactions. Americans are creeped out by the these White House responses in a way that goes beyond the dearth of facts.

It’s like an inside joke they don't even bother to conceal.

Those wonderful "transparent" Obama years are pock- marked w/ his obstinante refusal to disclose even information not usually regarded as sensitive or even private. He wont even answer questions like ‘where were you born’, ‘what were your grades in college’......

..... and ‘what was the president doing on the night a US ambassador was being murdered’ has been dribbled out so reluctantly that the blowback is fierce. The braindead insiders, themselves, dont seem to know they have created a mystery where there shouldn’t be one.