White House spokesman Josh Earnest dismissed the final report from the House Select Committee on Benghazi as “political fantasizing” on the part of Republicans, and charged that the report is a political gift from the House to the Republican National Committee.
“It seems at this point that … after eight different congressional inquiries have now been conducted into this matter, it seems that there is only one remaining question, and it’s simply this: Is the RNC going to disclose the in-kind contribution that they received from House Republicans today?” Earnest said.
“This was a $7 million effort, funded by taxpayers, to do what the would-be speaker of the House says was their goal, which was to tear down Secretary Clinton’s poll numbers,” he added. That was a reference to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who admitted in 2015 that a major result of the committee was to keep Clinton’s mistakes in the headlines.
“So that was their goal; it remains to be seen if that is what they accomplished,” Earnest added.
The report said there was never any military move to help the four Americans who ultimately died in the 2012 attack. But Earnest dismissed that as well, and said Republicans on the House Select Committee on Intelligence concluded “those charges are not true.”
“This has been thoroughly debunked by previous Republican-led investigations in the Congress,” he said.
“The fact is those congressional committees that have been committed to trying to understand the facts of a tragedy that led to the death of four Americans have concluded that what happened was a tragedy,” he said. “But they’ve also concluded that the variety of conspiracy theories that have been flowering on the Republican side of the aisle are politically motivated fantasies.”
“It’s unfortunate that the death of four Americans would be subject to that kind of political fantasizing,” Earnest added.
