Rep. Jason Chaffetz blasted Ben Rhodes, the embattled White House adviser accused of lying about the nuclear deal with Iran, for speaking freely with the press but refusing to appear before a committee investigating his claims.
“He does have a public speaking engagement today … but refuses to come and speak with Congress,” Chaffetz said Tuesday at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing about White House narratives surrounding the Iran deal.
“What is mystifying to me is how readily available he made himself to media,” but not to the committee, Chaffetz said.
Rhodes came under fire after a May 5 story in the New York Times exposed some of the Obama aide’s aggressive messaging tactics. Those included providing fictitious talking points to think tanks who then fed the talking points as facts to reporters.
The White House cited concerns over “separation of powers” when declining an invitation for Rhodes to testify.
The Iran deal was finalized in July and has remained controversial in the months since.
“The deal that had been spun up and sold to the American people. I’m not sure it’s as clear as it could have been,” Chaffetz said. “There’s still a shroud of secrecy.”
The State Department faced further criticism last week after reporters discovered a key portion of footage from a 2013 briefing was missing. In the missing clip, Fox News reporter James Rosen questioned an agency spokeswoman about rumors that negotiations for the nuclear deal began in 2011, two years before the administration said they began.
Administration officials used the election of moderate Iranians to justify beginning talks in 2013 to the public, although the missing footage suggested the negotiations began in secret far earlier.
Chaffetz played the video at the outset of the hearing in an effort to underscore lingering questions about when the talks began and why.
The chairman also played news clips of Rhodes that cast doubt on provisions of the nuclear agreement involving inspectors’ access to Iranian facilities and the number and type of ballistic missiles the Iranians were allowed to maintain, among other issues.
