The White House’s top spokesman on Tuesday flatly denied that the Obama administration hid intelligence or otherwise misled the public about what officials knew in the immediate aftermath of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
“There was no political effort to manipulate the information that was presented” to the public, Josh Earnest said on Tuesday. “There’s no evidence to substantiate that claim. I recognize that has not prevented Republicans from continuing to make that claim, but they do so without any shred of evidence.”
Earnest said even previous Republican-led investigations concluded that.
As to allegations that questionable decisions were made during a high-level White House meeting as events unfolded in Libya that the Obama administration has hid, Earnest answered: “There is no there, there.”
In the wake of the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s final report, Earnest said the panel turned up no new evidence or bombshells.
As to its assertion that the military was never deployed from the capital city, Tripoli, to the outpost in Benghazi, Earnest dismissed that as patently false, and repeatedly referred to the Accountability Review Board’s conclusions.
According to the Accountability Review Board “that was chaired by the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. [Michael] Mullen and Thomas Pickering, a U.S. diplomat that served both presidents, they took a close look at this and had praise for the military response,” Earnest said.
