Presumptuous Politics

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Alabama chief justice faces removal over fight to block gay marriage

Bailey Comment: The majority of people in America are not queer.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore — ousted from office more than a decade ago over a Ten Commandments display — now faces removal from the bench over his effort to block gay marriage from coming to that state after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission on Friday filed ethics charged against Moore, saying that the state chief justice abused the power of his office and displayed disrespect for the judiciary.
The charges largely stem from a Jan. 6 administrative order Moore sent to probate judges telling them an Alabama order and law banning same-sex marriages remained in effect. His order came six months after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges effectively legalized gay marriage.
"By issuing his unilateral order of January 6, 2016, Chief Justice Moore flagrantly disregarded a fundamental constitutional right guaranteed in all states as declared by the United States Court in Obergefell," the Judicial Inquiry Commission wrote in the charges.
The chief justice's order to probate judges came even though a federal judge had enjoined probate judges from enforcing Alabama's same-sex marriage ban, the commission wrote.
The Court of the Judiciary will decide whether Moore is guilty of violating judicial ethics. If found guilty, he could face removal from office.

Moore issued a statement Friday night saying he doesn't believe the commission has authority over administrative orders and state court injunction. Moore, as he did in a press conference last week about the complaints, referenced a recent protest outside his office by gay and transgender people.
"The JIC has chosen to listen to people like Ambrosia Starling, a professed transvestite, and other gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals, as well as organizations which support their agenda. We intend to fight this agenda vigorously and expect to prevail," Moore said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civils rights legal advocacy group, filed the complaint against Moore that led to Friday's charges.
"Moore has disgraced his office for far too long," SPLC President Richard Cohen said. "He's such a religious zealot, such an egomaniac that he thinks he doesn't have to follow federal court rulings he disagrees with. For the good of the state, he should be kicked out of office."
Moore previously served as Alabama's chief justice. The Court of Judiciary removed him from office after 2003 after he refused to comply with a federal court order to remove a boulder-sized Ten Commandments monument that he installed in the rotunda of the state judicial building.
Moore was re-elected in 2012.The fiery Republican chief justice has been an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage both on and off the bench. During a 2012 campaign stop he said gay marriage would be the "ultimate destruction of our country because it destroys the very foundation upon which this nation is based." He sent a Jan. 27, 2015, letter to Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley asking him to stand up to "judicial tyranny" after a federal judge ruled Alabama's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.
The chief justice held a press conference last week in Montgomery with attorney Mat Staver, who represented Kentucky clerk Kim Davis after she refused to issue marriage licenses. Moore and Staver criticized the Southern Poverty Law Center complaint as politically motivated.
Moore said he did not tell probate judges to defy a court order but was telling them that the Alabama Supreme Court order to refuse same-sex marriages had not been lifted.
"There is nothing in writing that you will find that I told anybody to disobey a federal court order. That's not what I said," Moore said last week. Asked if judges should be issuing licenses to gay couples, Moore said it remained for "probate judge to decide."
Despite Moore's January order, most Alabama counties are issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. However, a few Alabama counties have shut down marriage license operations and are not issuing them to anyone, in order to avoid giving licenses to gay couples.

Labour's Sadiq Khan elected 1st Muslim London mayor


Unbelievable stupid people in this world, voting this guy in?

LONDON – Labour Party politician Sadiq Khan has been elected London mayor — the first Muslim to lead Europe's largest city.
Election officials say Khan defeated Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith by more than 300,000 votes, after first- and second-preference votes were allocated.
The result came early Saturday, more than 24 hours after polls closed.
Khan was elected to replace Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson after a campaign marked by U.S.-style negative campaigning.
Goldsmith, a wealthy environmentalist, called Khan divisive and accused him of sharing platforms with Islamic extremists.
Khan, who calls himself "the British Muslim who will take the fight to the extremists," accused Goldsmith of trying to scare and divide voters in a proudly multicultural city of 8.6 million people — more than 1 million of them Muslim.

Gutfeld: Trump is a sports car, the rest are school buses

What follows are the variables that led to Donald Trump’s improbable but nearly unstoppable rise to becoming the presumptive Republican nominee. I realized, as I analyzed these variables, how much they had in common with artificial intelligence, technological explosions, and Moore's Law.
He took the world by surprise.
The surest way to reach frontrunner status is if no one else sees you coming, or takes you seriously, when you happen to show up happy and ready to go.
Trump had made overtures about running for president for years, and therefore was relegated to “boy who cried wolf” status.
We in the media mocked him regularly.
Until, of course, the wolf arrived – and announced that he would run.
Then, no one thought it possible, given Trump’s penchant for outrageous statements, that he could make this circus last. However, no one counted on a new kind of electorate either: one that, for better or worse, took what Trump said with a grain of salt. Giving him the historical "bubble of entertainment immunity," they forgave him what they would not forgive others.
He could make jokes befitting of a Comedy Central roast, and get away with it. This was not just a first, it exemplified Andrew Breitbart's central belief that politics is downstream from culture.
But being new to politics meant that Trump left no visible trail.
Sure, he had published books and appeared on morning television. He had ranted congenially on Howard Stern about war, marriage and sex – but there were no concrete issues attached to his views.
As he got older, his businesses likely served as a front for him -- as he prepared for his big foray onto the world political stage.
While America watched “The Apprentice,” Trump was watching America.
Because most presidential runs are preceded by the normal gradient of steady advances (run for a seat in the House, then on to the Senate, maybe become governor, then get sidetracked into a disastrous affair with a nanny), no one took him seriously – and their response to Trump came off as condescending and clumsy.
In fact, it was his surprising entrance that led to his Party’s own misunderstanding of him. The Republicans came off as stiff: how could they not see this coming? The fact is, they could not see it coming because there was no sign to be seen.
It wasn't their fault. If you expected a black swan, then they wouldn't be called black swans.
His rise fed off of existing content.
Trump’s rhetoric, vision, and ideas are rooted in a short-hand version of talk radio and cable television conservatism. It is hard to explode onto the scene, if you have spent decades creating your principled vision (like say, Ronald Reagan or um, Ronald Reagan).
Trump didn’t have to: he just scooped it all out of the white noise generators around him, and shaped it into a digestible, accessible platform of promises. He exploited existing hardware to great effect -- and like no other.
He did his homework, which was the equivalent of "books on tape" as reconfigured by Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Fox News.
A good comparison might be the lone hacker, who succeeds in putting the whole thing into action – after all the work had been done previously by other companies and organizations.
You can’t hack something that isn’t there, after all.
So what did Trump hack? The conservative movement.
He got in, figured it out, and ran with it.
All of those conservatives who had been in that movement for decades expressed understandable frustration. Imagine being in line for a Springsteen concert, and a chap cuts to the front of the line -- then disses you for waiting patiently. That's Trump entering the 2016 race, and relegating all before him, as establishment.
In sum: The traditional ideologies of patriotism, American exceptionalism – along with strong alpha male nationalism, buffet style cable TV content, linked to the alienation of an endless Obama era (eight years of the same, continuous political ideology naturally becomes tiresome – even to the apolitical) – all of this set the table for Trump to flip that final switch. It could just as easily have been Glenn Beck or Oprah Winfrey.
In fact I believe much of the animosity toward Trump from notable names and faces is due to the fact that they feel Trump's dare exposes their cowardice to do the same.

His machine ran itself with no outside help
His steady fast rise inspired greater interest, which then accelerated his steady, fast rise even more. Essentially, his momentum creates more momentum – and the power driving the movement starts to increase on its own – without needing input from the outside (aside from talking heads constantly pointing to the momentum, as its proof of life).
In the frightening world of artificial intelligence, one would call this “recursive self-improvement,” in which the entity’s primary purpose is to become more powerful, so that its rate of improvement keeps doubling.
Trump figured out how to apply Moore’s law to politics. Moore’s law is the theory that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit double every two years (roughly). Trump, by using the media’s vulnerability (they must find content to fill space) to his advantage (let me give you this “winning” story), created his own momentum.
He worked his advantages, quickly calling in favors
Trump obtained the strategic advantage by tapping into the social networks he’d already built among the media – which translated into massive amounts of free time on television – a plus that his 16 competitors did not have.
The social network created personal friendships, which translated to camera-ready spokespersons (old friends who now owe something to this mythic celebrity in their midst) on different shows, crafting the message.
The message was clear: Trump was not part of the establishment; his adversaries are. This provided excellent camouflage for his underlying posture: that of an authoritarian ruler. His many supporters could embrace the autocracy, without admitting to. Instead of saying, “I want an autocrat,” they can say, “He’s an outsider.” That doesn’t seem as bad. And it worked like magic.
He neutralized the enemies
Trump gained this advantage so quickly that he was able to use it not only to build his base, but to suppress his competition: elbowing them out of coverage. He created a monopoly among the candidates – one they could not imitate. In the realm of entertaining the masses with blunt rhetoric, Trump was Coke, and everyone else was Royal Crown. Ultimately he was able to turn the election season into a single obedient agency shaped around him. Everyone else was outside, looking in. Beware if you cross the machine. Like Coke, he only linked himself with “winning,” not with losing.
It would be hard to maintain a big lead like his, if his adversaries could mimic his style, or steal his ideas, effectively. But they were too slow, fearful and unfamiliar with these tactics.
The gap between Trump and the others only increased, as strong candidates like Jeb Bush and Rick Perry found it too difficult to assimilate. A dog can’t beat a cat, at being a cat. Or possibly, a pig.
He kept it lean, and mean
Trump’s tight organization made him a nimbler, fast moving warrior. In most organizations, bureaucracy slows you down – humans have different preferences and their squabbling and pernicious gossip adds a drag to your revving engine.
As Trump campaigners have noted: there is only one boss, and one voice – and they do as he says.
The allegiance is infectious, turning his supporters into dedicated, aggressive sports fans for Team Trump. Ultimately, this finite system of working parts allows the team to move faster than everyone else.
Trump is a sports car; the rest are school buses.

Elizabeth Warren going on Trump attack for Dems

The night of Donald Trump’s big Indiana Republican primary win, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was ready. She tore loose with a series of late-night anti-Trump tweets in which she accused him of racism, sexism, xenophobia, narcissism and a host of other faults.
Two weeks earlier, after being asked about another Warren tweet storm in which she accused him of being "a loser," Trump fired a warning shot across Warren's bow. "Who's that, the Indian? You mean the Indian," he responded, referring to a well-known political controversy over Warren claiming Indian heritage.
The exchanges signal the start of what could be a nasty surrogate side-battle as the general election campaign begins to take shape. Warren is poised to be an aggressive Trump critic, for the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, should she lock up the nomination. And for Trump, who thrives off detecting weakness and pouncing, Warren is a target-rich environment.
From 1986 to 1995, she listed herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools directory. Harvard Law School cited her alleged Indian heritage in dealing with criticism that it lacked a diverse faculty. Her recipe in the "Pow Wow Chow" cookbook became the subject of derision, after charges it was plagiarized from a New York Times cookbook.
"I think she's a fraud," said longtime nemesis and Boston conservative talk radio host, Howie Carr. "I think her entire success in academia and in politics is based on a lie that she's a Native American. She refuses to take a DNA test. She doesn't even call herself Native American, anymore," he said.
Asked what the purpose of that alleged fraud would have been, Carr said, "She was basically going nowhere in her academic career. She was an instructor at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. Suddenly she began checking the box and she was a tenured professor first at the University of Pennsylvania, and then she got a job at Harvard University law school. "
Warren's office did not respond to requests for an interview. Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a grassroots organization that raised over a million dollars in small donations for Warren's Senate campaign against Scott Brown, believes that Warren relishes baiting Trump and welcomes renewed scrutiny, should it come.
"The more Donald Trump takes the bait and attacks Elizabeth Warren and thrusts Elizabeth Warren into a national dialogue, the better for Hillary Clinton because the issues Hillary Clinton is fighting for are overwhelmingly popular with Democratic voters," he said.
Her critics, among them former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, whom she beat in the 2012 Senate race, suggest Warren's Twitter tear is not accidental. "She's been getting on Twitter more and more and criticizing Trump like she is the pit bull for the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, and, I would suspect, Hillary Clinton," he said.
Carr added, "I think Hillary Clinton is giving her instructions. She's going to put on her war bonnet and go out and attack Donald Trump."
One of the ironies of this fight is that the two are vying, at least in part, for the same voters – blue-collar workers and swing-state independents who may well decide the election.
Trump is trying to pull them right with promises of more coal and less regulation, while Warren, with her strong progressive bona fides, is pulling left with a call for more government safety nets and regulation.

Friday, May 6, 2016

Pundits Cartoon

The media's credibility gap: Now the pundits predict Trump will lose to Hillary

Now this is fascinating: All the pundits who got Donald Trump so wrong are now telling us how hard it will be for him to win a general election, or holding forth on what he needs to do this fall.
As if they had not just been part of the greatest journalistic misfire in modern political history.
The press, in other words, is facing a credibility gap.
Now that doesn’t automatically mean that the prognosticators are wrong this time. But it suggests the need for a little humility.
It’s undoubtedly true that Trump faces an uphill battle against Hillary Clinton. Any Republican would have to grapple with a daunting Electoral College map that has come to favor the Democrats, which is why they have won the popular vote in five of the last six elections.
As Chris Cillizza has pointed out, if Hillary wins the 19 states (plus D.C.) that have voted Democratic in the last six presidential elections, plus Florida, she’s got more than 270 electoral votes. And if she doesn’t win Florida, there are several other combinations of states that could put her over the top.
But those who thought Trump didn’t have a chance in hell (and Cillizza is among those who have cheerfully admitted that) may be miscalculating again.
Trump has high negatives (especially among women and Hispanics), but he managed to bring those numbers down during the primaries.
Trump has no political experience, but he engages in asymmetrical warfare of the kind that can drive opponents crazy—especially a less-than-nimble candidate like Clinton.
Trump is strongly opposed by pundits on the right and the left, but he turned that to his advantage this year by running against them and an unpopular media establishment.
Just to give you the flavor, here’s a National Review piece yesterday by David French:
“The party of Lincoln is in ruins. A minority of its primary voters have torched its founders’ legacy by voting for a man who combines old-school Democratic ideology, a bizarre form of hyper-violent isolationism, fringe conspiracy theories, and serial lies with an enthusiastic flock of online racists to create perhaps the most toxic electoral coalition since George Wallace…
“Trump is the destroyer of conservatism, and he will taint all who take his side.”
And here’s a Salon story yesterday by Simon Malloy, who admits that he was among the many commentators who was “completely wrong about Trump”:
“The widespread dismissal of Trump 2016 stands out as one of the more significant media failures of the past year, and it’s good that at least a few people are willing to circle back and figure out why they blew it…
“Already we’re seeing high-profile reporters and pundits who are grubbing for access to Trump by sugarcoating or rationalizing his belligerence and bigotry. The urge to provide Trump the same deference and treatment one would a mainstream politician will be strong. But that gives the Republican nominee more credit than he’s due, and it pushes to the background everything that makes Donald Trump the malignant political force that he is.”
Trump, for his part, is reaching out to the party establishment and trying to mend fences, with mixed success. Some Republicans are softening their opposition to him, while others are with Paul Ryan in withholding their support, or George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush in making clear they will never support him. This could have something to do with Jeb, but also with Trump’s criticism of the Iraq war and divorcing himself from the Bush brand of Republicanism.
Maybe, in some way, these establishment snubs help underscore that Trump is a different kind of Republican.
The billionaire faces the challenge of setting up a national campaign apparatus and fundraising operation. But the more fundamental question is whether his positions will have far less appeal outside the narrower bandwidth of Republican contests.
On hot-button issues like immigration, probably so. But keep in mind that Trump is also running as a businessman who knows something about creating jobs and is opposed to the kind of trade deals that have hurt many working-class voters.
He is also running as a Republican who is vowing to protect entitlement programs and is downplaying the importance of social issues.
The press just hasn’t had to deal with this kind of GOP nominee in a very long time. And that’s why Trump could win over what used to be called Reagan Democrats, or at least their kids.
Oh, and Hillary has pretty high negatives as well.
Still, his ambition of putting in play such traditionally Democratic states as New York and Pennsylvania may prove to be unrealistic, and so the electoral math may still be against him.
Now the press is getting caught up in VP talk. Will Trump pick Kasich, Rubio or Christie? Will he go for a female governor? We don’t know—right now, he doesn’t know—so it’s sheer speculation at this point.
But the press should be careful about judging the fall campaign based on the usual political assumptions. Trump, you may have noticed, has spent the last year smashing those assumptions.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

RNC head says Trump, Ryan to meet next week

Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said Thursday that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan would meet next week in an effort to clear the air after Ryan said he was "just not ready" to back Trump in the general election this fall.
"I think it's going to work out," Priebus told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "In some cases people are not going to be instantly on board, and I now that can be frustrating for some people. But i think everyone has to ... allow a little bit of the steam to get out and get everybody settled down. And I think this is going to come together."
Priebus spoke hours after Ryan confirmed CNN that he was "just not ready" to support or endorse Trump. The Wisconsin Republican suggested that he wants the real estate mogul to do more to unify the party first, but added that he hoped to support Trump.
Trump fired back in a statement, saying, "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda."
"Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," the statement continued. "They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"
Preibus told Hannity he had spoken to both Trump and Ryan Thursday and said both men were "committed to sitting down and actually talking this out."
As the highest-ranking Republican lawmaker, Ryan's reluctance to offer his full-throated support signifies the immensity of the task ahead for Trump in unifying the party, especially considering Ryan will serve as chairman of the GOP convention in Cleveland.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign also has been eager to point out any rifts in the party, and quickly blasted out a message claiming Ryan had joined the “growing list of conservatives rebuking Trump."

Also Thursday, the Associated Press reported that Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner will not endorse Trump in the general election and will not attend the convention. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who is expected to face a tough re-election fight against Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has said he is also skipping the convention.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican chief executive in a traditionally Democratic state, declined again Thursday to endorse a GOP candidate, despite the departures this week of Ted Cruz and John Kasich that left Trump the last man standing.
"I said I was not going to get involved, and I would not endorse any candidate and that I was going to stay focused on Maryland," Hogan told reporters, according to The Washington Post. "And I’m not going to take any more stupid questions about Donald Trump."
By contrast, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who endorsed Cruz ahead of this week's primary, has said he will back Trump, telling TV station WTHI "I look forward to supporting our presumptive nominee. I think Donald Trump will do very well in the Hoosier State."
Fox News confirmed Thursday that 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney – a vocal Trump critic -- has no plans to attend the convention, while former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush both have confirmed they will not attend either. A source close to former Senator and 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole said he would “briefly” attend the convention but primarily to attend a lunch hosted by his law firm.
"This was a very contentious primary," Priebus said. "I think it's going to take a little bit of time, but I think for the most part this is going to come together. Maybe not 100 percent, but i think we're going to get very close to that and i think people will fall in line."

State Dept. pushes back on Guccifer claims of breaching Clinton server

The State Department joined the Hillary Clinton campaign Thursday in pushing back on Romanian hacker Guccifer’s claims that he successfully breached the former secretary of state’s personal server.
Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News that he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” claiming that for him, “it was easy.”
Asked about the claims at Thursday’s press briefing, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he’s not aware of such an incident.
“We don’t have any reason to believe that it might be true,” he said.
At the same time, Toner repeatedly stressed he did not want to comment on the security of the server, citing ongoing investigations. Asked if he’s in a position to even know whether Lazar’s claims are true, Toner again said he did not want to comment.
The Clinton campaign issued a more definitive denial.
In response to Lazar’s claims, the Clinton campaign issued a statement Wednesday night saying, "There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell. In addition to the fact he offers no proof to support his claims, his descriptions of Secretary Clinton's server are inaccurate. It is unfathomable that he would have gained access to her emails and not leaked them the way he did to his other victims.”
However, Lazar provided extensive details about his hacking, in interviews from the Virginia jail where he is being held.
The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal's AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” though he described the contents as “not interest[ing]” to him at the time.
“I was not paying attention. For me, it was not like the Hillary Clinton server, it was like an email server she and others were using with political voting stuff," Guccifer said.
The hacker spoke freely with Fox News from the detention center in Alexandria, Va., where he’s been held since his extradition to the U.S. on federal charges relating to other alleged cyber-crimes.
While Lazar's claims cannot be independently verified, three computer security specialists, including two former senior intelligence officials, said the process described is plausible and the Clinton server, now in FBI custody, may have an electronic record that would confirm or disprove Guccifer’s claims.
As recently as this week, Clinton said neither she nor her aides had been contacted by the FBI about the criminal investigation. Asked whether the server had been compromised by foreign hackers, she told MSNBC on Tuesday, “No, not at all.”
Recently extradited, Lazar faces trial Sept. 12 in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count federal indictment for his alleged hacking crimes in the U.S. Victims are not named in the indictment but reportedly include Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family and others including Blumenthal.
Lazar also told Fox News that during his flight to the U.S. from Romania on or about March 31, he was accompanied by an FBI agent and a State Department official. He said he talked to the FBI and “wrote up eight pages of notes” during the flight, stressing that “I have nothing to hide.”
Lazar told Fox News that, while imprisoned in Romania where he was serving a seven-year sentence, he met several times with U.S. agents from the FBI, Secret Service and Treasury.
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump reacted to the report Thursday, calling the claim by Guccifer "very serious."
"If it's true it’s very serious," Trump told Fox News' Bret Baier. "It’s not a question of him. It’s what she did and why did she do it?"

Documents show State Department missed target date for special Benghazi unit

The State Department missed its own target date last year for the establishment of a special unit to review Benghazi documents, documents obtained by Fox News show.
The previously unpublished documents, generated by the House select committee that is investigating the 2012 terror attacks, detail how Rep. Trey Gowdy, the panel’s Republican chairman from South Carolina, began working behind the scenes early last year to help the department secure over $4 million in “reprogrammed” funds set aside by Congress for such a unit.
According to agreements worked out between Republican staff on the committee and top aides to Secretary of State John Kerry, including chief of staff Jonathan Finer, the document review unit was supposed to be “operational” in June 2015.
Yet the State Department, prompted by inquiries from Fox News, now acknowledges it missed that target date. “The Congressional Document Production unit began staffing up in mid-2015,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner in an email late Thursday, “and is now fully operational.”
The records obtained by Fox News also show repeated refusals by Kerry’s aides, including Finer, to account for what happened to the appropriated funds when Gowdy’s staff made repeated inquiries about the matter back in mid-2015.
Gowdy told Fox News he sought the additional funding “so they could speed up document production to Congress and we could finish the investigation faster.”
Top administration officials, including white House spokesman Josh Earnest, have accused the committee of prolonging the investigation for “political” reasons – specifically, to try to damage Clinton’s presidential candidacy.
In his email to Fox News, Toner acknowledged that Gowdy and his staff had indeed “supported” the request for additional funding.
This prompted Gowdy, in an emailed statement of his own, to say he “appreciates” the Obama administration “finally confirming the Benghazi Committee went the extra mile to complete its investigation as soon as possible by helping the State Department get extra funding.”
According to the internal committee files, the State Department’s document review unit was supposed to encompass twelve full-time employees, including at least three lawyers, “case managers” to oversee responses to specific document requests, and an IT professional.
The State Department conveyed to the committee last year that it intended to use some of the U.S. personnel evacuated from Yemen last year to staff the unit, according to the documents.
On Thursday, Toner said the use of the personnel from Yemen was “never necessary” – but did not spell out why the evacuated personnel were considered superfluous when the department was having trouble meeting its own target date of mid-June for the unit to become operational.
Asked at Wednesday’s press briefing if he could attest that the reprogrammed funds had actually been spent for the intended purpose, Toner said he was “fairly certain” that they “would have been.”
Co-chaired by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democrat from Maryland, the Benghazi committee has spent two years investigating the terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities on September 11, 2012 that killed America’s ambassador to Libya at the time, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans.
The committee unearthed the fact that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, used a private email server for all of her official email correspondence. Among the emails subsequently made public was one that showed Clinton giving her daughter an account of the attacks that differed sharply from the false narrative about them that the secretary of state, and other top administrations officials, were pressing publicly.
Toner noted that the department has already provided close to 100,000 pages of documents to the committee, which is expected to produce its final report next month.
Washington-based attorney Mark Paoletta, who spent a decade as the Republican chief counsel to a House investigating subcommittee, told Fox News the Obama administration is “notorious” for “slow-rolling” investigative panels like the Benghazi committee. He cited Clinton’s private email server as evidence of this pattern.
“How can you seriously say that you’re being transparent,” Paoletta said in an interview with Fox News, “when the secretary of state is running a private server and has deleted over 30,000 of those documents before anyone even knows that it’s in existence?”