Darrell Issa Ignores Congressional Report On Benghazi To Attack Hillary Clinton

BY HAYES BROWN/Think Progress

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight Committee and one of the leading voices in attacking the Obama administration over its response to the Benghazi attack,completely ignored a recent Congressional investigation’s conclusions in the name of attacking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Speaking at a fundraising dinner in Concord, NH on Monday night, Issa was asked about his committee’s efforts to get to the bottom of just what occurred the night of Sept. 11, 2012 when a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya came under attack. One persistent theoryamong conservatives has been that at some point during the night, a “stand down” order was given to the military, preventing them from rescuing the Americans under attack. “We need to have an answer of when the Secretary of Defense had assets that he could have begun spinning up,” Issa said at the fundraiser during a question and answer segment. “Why there was not one order given to turn on one Department of Defense asset?”

“I have my suspicions, which is Secretary Clinton told Leon [Panetta] to stand down, and we all heard about the stand down order for two military personnel,” Issa continued. “That order is undeniable.”

But there is one group of people that would deny Issa’s claims: his Republican colleagues in the House Armed Services Committee. Just last week, the committee’s majority released their report on the Pentagon’s actions during the night of the attack, which explicitly denied the existence of the order Issa claims happened. “There was no ‘stand down’ order issued to U.S. military personnel in Tripoli who sought to join the fight in Benghazi,” the report says within its first few pages.

It appears that Issa hasn’t read the rest of his compatriots’ report just yet either, judging by the rest of his remarks. “They were told not to get on – get off the airplane and kind of standby – and they’re going to characterize it wasn’t stand down,” Issa said, referring to the Obama administration. “But when we’re done with Benghazi, the real question is, was there a stand down order to Leon Panetta or did he just not do his job? Was there a stand down order from the President who said he told them to use their resources and they didn’t use them? Those questions have to be answered.”

Luckily for him, those questions already have been answered. “Given the military’s preparations on September 11, 2012, majority members have not yet discerned any response alternatives that could have likely changed the outcome of the Benghazi attack,” the report concludes.

When the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog asked Oversight Committee spokesman Frederick Hill about the report, he responded that Issa was asking a “very straightforward question” in blaming Clinton. He also pointed out that the HASC report did not “draw a conclusion about whether the State Department sought to discourage, limit, or constrain a military response,” thus making whether or not Clinton ordered a stand down that never happened a legitimate line of inquiry.

Issa has been at the forefront of GOP attacks against the Obama administration over Benghazi, using his position to launch hearing after hearing over the situation, despite never producing the smoking gun he insists exists. Those repeated attacks over the past year and a half have yet to gain much traction among the American people. He’s also gotten in troublewith his Democrat counterparts for taking secret trips to Benghazi without informing them.

And highlighting Clinton’s role in the response is likely to become more frequent as the primary season for the 2016 presidential election approaches. Clinton is described as the presumptive front runner of the race, and is already the subject of polling about voter beliefs about Benghazi. In late December, in the face of a New York Times report on the attack, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) insinuated that a coordinated rollout of news stories was occurring to smooth the path for Clinton’s eventual nomination. (HT: Oliver Willis)

UPDATE

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, wrote to Issa on Friday, calling on him to apologize for his remarks:

“The definition of treason is the betrayal of allegiance owed to one’s country, and your statements seem to accuse former Secretary Clinton of this offense. You suggest that Secretary Clinton directed the Secretary of Defense of the United States to intentionally withhold military assistance that may have saved the lives of one of her own ambassadors and three other brave Americans serving their country. Your accusations are beyond the pale, and you should immediately retract them and issue a public apology.”

Elijah Cummings rips Darrell Issa for ‘reckless’ anti-Obamacare accusations

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

The offices of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) engaged in a war of words following a letter Cummings sent Issa criticizing him for misleading the public on the issues surrounding the government’s healthcare.gov website, The Hillreported on Friday.

“It is evident that the testing conducted for Healthcare.gov was inadequate, particularly considering the very high demand experienced in the first days after the website became operational, and I believe Congress can play a key role in conducting responsible oversight to ensure that millions of Americans obtain the health insurance coverage they deserve,” Cummings said in the letter, which was republished by The Daily Kos. “But it is reckless and highly irresponsible to make unsubstantiated public allegations by taking information out of context, especially when the Committee has information in its possession that directly contradicts these unfounded allegations.”

Cummings, who serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee with committee chair Issa, accused the California Republican of ignoring Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesperson Henry Chao’s prediction that the site would be able to support 58,000 users when it launched in favor of a statement claiming it could only take 1,100 users the day before, a figure based on a separate study.

Following the statement, Issa then criticized both U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and White House spokesperson Jay Carney in an interview with Fox News, saying, “Jay Carney is paid to say things that aren’t so. But in this case, Todd Park and other people who knew the facts, who had to know the facts.”

“This is not the first time you have accused a White House official of being a ‘paid liar,’ a practice that several of your Republican colleagues have condemned,” Cummings’ letter stated. “Given that your staff participated in Mr. Chao’s transcribed interview last week — before you issued your press release and conducted your television interview — it is unclear why you did not disclose the information Mr. Chao provided, but instead chose to accuse Mr. Park and Mr. Carney of misleading the American people.”

A spokesperson for the committee told The Hill in a statement that “Ranking Member Cummings’ attempted distortions are continually shameless,” accusing him of omitting a statement by Chao that the website could handle “somewhere under 10,000″ users. But a separate Democratic spokesperson accused Republicans in turn of “trying to confuse matters” because Chao’s statement related to the website’s registration process, instead of the “online application marketplace,” referred to as the FFM.

Cummings also slammed Issa in his letter for threatening to subpoena Park after Park had already volunteered to testify before the committee in December.

“Based on information obtained by the Committee, it appears that you fundamentally misunderstood or mischaracterized the document you released to the press yesterday and that your accusations against Mr. Park and Mr. Carney are wholly unfounded,” the letter stated.

Issa directed Treasury inspector general to ignore IRS treatment of liberal groups

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

The bombshell IRS audit released in May omitted information about liberal groups at the request of House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s office.

A spokesman for Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George told The Hill on Tuesday that Issa had requested investigators “narrowly focus on tea party organizations.”

The subsequent audit concluded the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to single out for additional scrutiny tea party groups that applied for tax exempt status. The findings lead almost every politician, including President Barack Obama, to denounce the IRS. Several Republicanssuggested the audit indicated the White House had a Nixonian “enemies list.”

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Issa said the IRS appeared to have been targeting Obama’s political opponents “perhaps not on his request” but “on his behalf.”

But new documents have revealed that liberal and progressive groups received similar treatment from the IRS. The “inappropriate criteria” used to single out tea party groups — so-called “Be On the Look Out” (BOLO) memos — also singled out progressive and “Occupy” groups.

“We did not review the use, disposition, purpose or content of the other BOLOs. That was outside the scope of our audit,” the Treasury inspector general spokesman told The Hill.

The BOLO memos stated tax exempt status for progressive groups “may not be appropriate” because they were engaged in “anti-Republican” political activity. On the other hand, the BOLO memos only directed IRS employees to send tea party applications to a particular group. IRS officials have said the tea party applications were “centralized” to insure they received consistent treatment. Exactly how the BOLO memos were used remains unclear.

The report identified 298 groups that were subjected to additional scrutiny, and identified 98 of those groups as either tea party, patriot or 9/12 groups. The remaining 202 groups were labelled as “other.” During congressional hearings, George was repeatedly asked if these 202 “other” groups included liberal organizations. He said he couldn’t “make that determination” based on the available evidence. However, several liberal groups received the same level of IRS scrutinyas tea party groups.

The omitted information has caused Democrats to question whether the audit was truthful.

“Failing to make this clear in these documents and at Congressional Hearings even when asked directly has been fully misleading,” Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) wrote in a letter to George on Wednesday. “It has contributed to the distortion of this entire investigation, including use of innuendo and totally unsubstantiated assertions of White House involvement.”

The Associated Press on Wednesday confirmed that liberal and progressive groups were subjected the same treatment that conservative groups had complained about, including excessive questioning and extremely long waits. The liberal group Catholics United, for instance, waited seven years before receiving tax exempt status, far longer than any tea party group was forced to wait.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration’s office has continued to defend its audit of the IRS. Karen Kraushaar told the Associated Press that the inspector general was only “asked to look at the treatment of organizations known to be affiliated with the tea party in its review, and was asked to audit the way those organizations were being treated when they applied for tax-exempt status.”

Kraushaar implied information regarding liberal and progressive groups was omitted simply because of the narrow scope of the audit.

House Republicans have denied they attempted to limit the audit of the IRS. They acknowledged they requested the audit based off complaints they received from tea party groups, but that should not have prevented investigators from mentioning the impact on other effected groups. A Republican aide told The Hill that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration had “the authority to look at whatever they wanted to, and would be expected to do so if there was wrongdoing.”

Issa had previously released excerpts from a congressional investigation that purportedly proved the “targeting of conservative political groups came from Washington, D.C.” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) later released the full transcripts to show there was no evidence the Obama administration was involved.

Transcripts expose Issa's Witch hunt

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The Press Lets Darrell Issa Turn IRS Story Into Another Partisan Pursuit

 ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters For America:

Answering reporters' questions in the White House Rose Garden last month, President Obama vowed to address the just-uncovered IRS controversy, in which the agency inappropriately targeted conservative groups that were applying for tax-exempt status. "We will be putting in new leadership that will be able to make sure that we...hold accountable those who have taken these outrageous actions," Obama said on May 16.

Obama announced that the acting IRS director was leaving, and pledged to work with Congress and institute new safeguards, in part by implementing some of the recommendations included in the newly released inspector general's report.

"The good news is it's fixable," Obama said. "And it's in everyone's best interest to work together to fix it." At the time, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said that the president "set exactly the right tone."

Less than three weeks later, Issa appeared on CNN and called White House Press Secretary Jay Carney a "paid liar." He also dangled for journalists some cherry-picked excerpts from Congressional interviews with a handful of IRS workers, stressed he was convinced the IRS targeting had been done "in all likelihood" for political purposes, and assured viewers it was just a matter of time before he uncovered enough evidence to prove his claims. ("We're getting to proving it," he said.)

In other words, what started out, briefly, as a bipartisan effort to fix a serious federal government problem, and what started out with Obama admitting that mistakes were made and committing to holding people accountable, quickly degenerated into the latest partisan pursuit inside Washington.

The focus of Issa's hearings is no longer fixing a problem. It's been shifted to affixing political blame. Rather than asking how the IRS mistake can be avoided in the future, the questions now being asked revolve around politics and the process.

And it was Issa's June 2 CNN appearance, where he uncorked wild charges about the IRS story (charges often based on his "gut" instincts), that signaled to the press that Republicans were, without question, treating the IRS story as purely a political and partisan endeavor. And it was Issa's rhetoric that helped mold the larger media narrative surrounding the story: GOP targets the White House in IRS probe. That in turn produces puts Democrats on the defensive, forced to disprove Republican charges, even though the allegations aren't grounded in fact.

Much the same way the press followed Republicans' lead and allowed the terrorist attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi to be turned into an almost an exclusively partisan pursuit, the same pattern has emerged with the IRS story.

Despite the fact the IRS commissioner at the time of the targeting scandal was appointed by President Bush, and despite the fact the inspector's general report stressed there was no proof the White House or the Obama administration or his re-election campaign in any way urged IRS workers to single out conservative applicants, Issa has adopted the Fox News approach to scandal investigating: Announce Democrats are guilty and then set out in search of the evidence.

It's almost the Alex Jones approach to fact-finding. Issa throwing out allegations based on his "gut" leads to headlines like these: 

Politico: "Darrell Issa charges Washington involvement In IRS scandal"

Atlantic Wire: "Issa Says IRS Scrutiny Was Directed By Washington"

Christian Science Monitor: "Smoking gun in IRS Scandal? Rep. Darrell Issa Says He's Close"

Following Issa's cable TV appearance, the New York Times eagerly portrayed Issa's hollow allegations as newsworthy:

Mr. Issa ratcheted up the pressure over the weekend with the selective release of excerpts from continuing committee interviews with I.R.S. employees in Cincinnati involved in the added scrutiny of Tea Party groups and other conservative associations.

It wasn't until the 24^th paragraph that the Times conceded none of Issa's claims "constituted evidence of wrongdoing at the White House."

Darrell Issa Acknowledges He Learned Nothing New From His Benghazi Hearing

By Ben Armbruster/Think Progress
House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) tacitly admitted on Wednesday that his hearing on the Benghazi terror attacks the same day didn’t turn up any new information.

“I’m curious, did you learn anything new today?” Fox News host Greta Van Susteren asked Issa in an interview after the hearing. After meandering around for a bit, Issa finally got to the hearing’s grand revelation — Benghazi was a terror attack:

ISSA: I think the American people learned today from these brave witnesses, these whistleblowers, that the facts as we were told before during and after the attack at Benghazi just simply aren’t what they really were. The acting ambassador after Ambassador Stevens was murdered, told us in great detail about what happened that day and what happened in the days to follow and why we should know that he knew and everyone else in the mission knew from the moment it happened, from the get-go, as he said, that this was a terrorist attack.

Watch the clip:

While indeed, former deputy chief of mission Greg Hicks’ testimony detailing his experiences as the attacks on the Benghazi diplomatic mission unfolded was new and riveting. But it didn’t have much to do with what Issa himself said the mission of the hearing would be: expose more Obama administration failures and perhaps even some kind of cover-up (of what, is unclear exactly). “Our hearing will examine new facts about what happened and significant problems with the administration’s own review of Benghazi failures,” Issa said previewing the hearinglast month. “This committee will expose what they did and hold them accountable to the public.”

There’s “no question,” Issa said two days before the hearing, that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff or even Clinton herself, was involved in a Benghazi “cover-up” (there was no cover-up of any kind, by anyone).

However, Issa’s hearing didn’t expose anything, except perhaps how fact-free a number of right-wing Benghazi conspiracy theories are, including the idea that Clinton personally signed off on cables denying additional security for the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

But as far as labeling Benghazi a terror attack, that issue has been settled long ago. President Obama referred to it as an “act of terror” the day after the attack and directly referred to the incident as “a terrorist attack” two weeks later. Issa probably didn’t need a hours-long hearing to get confirmation on that.