Is it not a crime for House Members to take requested classified materials from the White House for use in a so-called scandal investigation, and then alter those documents and then leak the contents to the Press with the intent to mislead the public about the scandal they are supposed to be seriously investigating?
Republicans appear to have committed this crime on Benghazi but is it simply an act of political dishonesty with no criminal lisbilty for the perpetrators.
I believe since it does involve leaking classified information in the first place, the fact that the docs were altered should rise to some level of criminality.
It’s about as dishonest as it gets and the press should respond loudly and harshly to discourage anybody else from pulling this kind of stunt, but I have trouble picturing what kind of crime it should be.
It should show, yet again, that the GOP cannot be trusted. It still baffles me that people listen to them, trust them, and think Obama’s bad.
I find it a nice rule in life to believe the exact opposite of what the GOP believes. They think Obama’s the worst president ever? I have him up there near Lincoln. They think he’s a liar? I call him the most honest president we’ve ever had. They say he’s a foreigner? I believe he created baseball and apple pie and designed the American flag. That kind of opposite hyperbole is a lot closer to the truth than anything the GOP or its partisan groups spit out
No, it should not. I find it unlikely that the government would be forced to meet a reasonable standard of evidence to prove that their version of the classified document is the original and not a forgery, which makes it a perfect weapon to persecute whistleblowers - not only can you charge them with a crime, you can do so while ruling that they didn’t actually reveal anything untoward.
Since the House is determined to permanently avoid doing anything useful, why not have some Benghazi Hearings Benghazi Hearings. Of course, the ruling party will determine there was no wrongdoing, but that will give them something to do while they dream up a new phony “scandal”.
The thing that is puzzling me is why they would do this?
The changes that they made weren’t monumental, and they couldn’t really use their version of the e-mails effectively since I soon as they make a big deal about them, someone would notice the difference and they would get caught.
Its obvious. They want to get some mileage out of the “scandal” by faking emails, knowing that the first reports will contain all of the emotional anger by tying Obama to Benghazi and that subsequent reports denying it will be met by their most ardent supporters as the cover-up, or flat out ignored because people will hear the outrage but not the ultimate explanation and resolution
If you are the GOP, you don’t have to be right. You can lie about it, create a scandal, knowing that your supporters are so dumb they won’t look past the initial anger and accusations. Nobody watching FOX News is going to look at NBC or CNN later and recognize that the GOP doctored the emails. Instead, they’ll stash it in the back of their heads that there’s yet another thing Obama was covering up
The changes made were monumental in that they were leaked to ABC and CBS because leaking them to Fox News would not have created the huge sensation that Jon Karl of ABC’s report produced last week. Return your thoughts to last Wednesday when the big Republican Benghazi blockbuster House hearings were a big flop.
And then Jon Karl revved the nut jobs all up once again.
Now the die hards just claim they need more emails and will never stop the gum-flapping that there is a scandal in Benghazi somewhere and there should be no quit until the cover up is defeated and we no that Obama and Hillary are proven to be evil.
You must remember that this Republican controlled House need not prove a scandal exists to achieve what they want. Scandal-mongering is a business decision in my view for the right. They need to keep that 33% sending money to right wing causes without ever really delivering any right winger policies. Getting Obama is enough to keep Rush and Fox and the Heritage Foundation going.
Rachel is explaining to her fellow journalist that if they know who the source is that made up the lie about what the Benghazi talking point emails actually said and then fed their lies to you as a journalist, such as Jon Karl, then that source is no longer a source - that person is a con artist and you no longer are required to protect that source,
If you got those emails that are fake then you know who gave them to you. Give the liar up.
A huge stupid mistake by the Republicans. Just when the Obama administration is facing some actual scandals, the Republicans pull a stunt like this and put themselves back in hot seat.
I’m just hazarding a guess here, but that guess would be that the perps here thought Obama would never, ever, ever actually release the e-mails. They probably figured they were right about their accusations, and the real e-mails would prove that, so they were not risking anything, because if Obama did release them, it would prove them right. So he wouldn’t. And then he did.
So, the problem boils down to believing their own bullshit, and relying upon it. Oopsy!
However the edited changes by Republicans who passed those changes to the Press were changes that twisted the facts to focus on the State Department and that is exactly where the wanted the Benghazi Scandal to go - AFTER HILLARY.
It was reported that Congressional staffers could take notes but not copy the emails, so I would be interested in knowing if the ‘drafts of the notes’ were changed just prior to passing them off to Jon Karl and other members of the news media.
If original notes were accurate but then realizing that that Wednesday Benghazi hearings were a flop, since they thought only Fox News was reporting on it, then they came up with some hastily revised drafts that Jon Karl screamed the headline that the WH ‘scrubbed the emails’ from Jon Karl’s big new find. Actual quotes from the emails.
Don’t you think we deserve to know if that kind of nefarious activity took place?
The timing of this does not solidify that this was an “ooooops” moment.
Big things are at stake here including Republicans holding onto the House in 2014 and winning the WH in 2016 and the Senate.
Benghazigategate began before the four dead Americans body’s were cold. Romney opened mouth and inserted his Testoni clad foot right in it.
Sympathizing with those who attack US Soil would be tantamount to treason. Romney really showed how much he sucked when he and RNC Chairman Priebus came out swinging with that crap.
But Romney is a loser so the scandal went away on it’s own. But we should not forget what the top Republican at the time said.
What is what he did? My God, you post a link to the Washington Post giving Obama four Pinocchio’s for saying “Act of Terror” three times immediately following the attack and then claiming to have called it an “Act of Terrorism” right after the attack.
And apparently our President who has plenty of work related things to do while running for re-election against a man who no longer had a job, did not include “ism” on the word “terror” three times immediately following the attack.
And that deliberate, conniving, artfully dodgy language was supposed to mislead enough voters to conclude that al Qaeda was truly defeated after he got Osama Bin Laden and that the attack at Benghazi was just a group of ticked off Muslims mad about the video just like up in Cairo and other embassies around the world.
And the purpose of this lie was to keep the American people from finding out that killing Osama Bin Laden was not enough to prevent al Qaeda from launching an attack and that would mean voters should conclude that Mitt Romney should become President.
Is that about right, or what is it you are trying to tell us?