Topic: Accuracy in Media
When House Majority Leader candidate Kevin McCarthy effectively admitted that the House Benghazi Select Committee was a scheme to drive down Hillary Clinton's poll numbers, right-wingers knew the game was up. Now comes Accuracy in Media's Roger Aronoff to deny the obvious, even insisting that AIM's own "Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi" kangaroo court is political:
Following a series of rather uneventful hearings on Benghazi, other than Hillary’s line, “What difference, at this point, does it make?” plus the stacked-deck hearing by the “independent” Accountability Review Board, we at Accuracy in Media (AIM) decided to do something about it. In July of 2013, we formed the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB), with a group of top retired military leaders, former CIA officers, and congressmen, including the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, with the purpose of doing our own independent investigation in an attempt to reveal the truth about what happened—before, during and after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi on September 11 and 12, 2012—and hold people accountable. We have made much progress, and are still at it.
We started off with an all-day conference in September 2013, which can be viewed here. Leading off the conference was Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who already had a House bill with approximately 185 Republican House members as co-sponsors, calling for a Select Committee on Benghazi. The advantage of a Select Committee is that it brings all facets of the investigation under one roof, rather than being divided up between various committees, each with a limited scope and purview. Plus, a Select Committee isn’t limited by the normal rules, in which each questioner has only five minutes, which can easily be eaten up by a single answer. Wolf was the real driving force in Congress behind the formation of a Select Committee. You can watch or read his comments here. It had nothing to do with driving down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers.
Aronoff doesn't sound very convincing. He offers nothing to back up his assertion beyond insisting it wasn't political. And if AIM's little kangaroo court wasn't political, why is it filled with Obama-haters and birthers?
Indeed, we've been pointing out the kangaroo-court nature of the CCB since AIM announced it in 2013. Neither Aronoff nor AIM has disputed the fact that it's stacked with birthers and Obama-haters who cannot possibly be interested in an impartial view of the Benghazi evidence that does not implicate Obama or Clinton.
Now we know the CCB is no different from the House Select Committee in its partisan intent. Aronoff should stop pretending that politics isn't his primary motivation.
