The Gold Standard of Witch Hunts

The whiner-in-chief, having presided over an operation with the Russian government to undermine the U.S. electoral process – no, this hasn’t been proven, but it will be – says he is an innocent victim of “the media” and is being treated in a historically unfair way. He is, he contends, the object of a “witch hunt.” Well, why don't we take a look at an actual witch hunt, by which we mean a phony search for a non-existent villain upon whom to blame one’s problems for political gain. In witch-hunt world, this one is the gold standard.

On September 11, 2012, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of State, the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked and burned.  Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. At first, it was thought the attack was the spontaneous reaction of an angry mob to a video mocking Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. Later, it was determined to have been a “terrorist” attack, meaning a planned action by unidentified Islamic radicals. The government changed its assessment regarding who was responsible after additional facts came to light – a change which Clinton opponents characterized as somehow sinister. “What difference does it make?” Clinton rightly asked when Republicans went into a tizzy over whether it was angry mob or a planned attack by militants – a question those opponents have never answered.

Investigations of the matter over the succeeding months and years were conducted by the following: U.S. State Department Accountability Review Board. the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the House Judiciary Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, the House Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

That last one, the investigation by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, headed by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), lasted longer than the 9/11 Commission, and congressional investigations into the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, the 1983 bombing that killed 241 American service members in Beirut, and the response to Hurricane Katrina. The committee hauled in more than 100 witnesses, subjected Clinton to an 11-hour grilling, and spent some $7 million on the undertaking. This inquiry was after all the ones listed above – none of which uncovered any evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton or issued any conclusions to that effect. Same result for the House Committee. Its astounding conclusion after the expenditure of all that time and treasure: Security at the mission was not as good as it might have been.

But, of course, it was never about getting to the bottom of what happened that night and who, if anyone, in the U.S. government was at fault. It was always about creating a cloud of suspicion over candidate Clinton among folks who the Republicans knew would not pay very close attention to the actual goings-on in the committee or to its conclusions. Where there was smoke, they knew many voters would believe, there was fire. This investigation was 100-percent smoke. Two years and $7 million worth of smoke.

And it worked, exactly the way they believed it would. “Benghazi” became, among the anti-Hillary people, a buzz word which they would invoke as though its meaning were self-evident; no need to explain how, or even if, the events of that night reflected negatively on Clinton. It was enough to simply speak the word and heads would nod in agreement.

In September of 2015, in a moment of candor that many believe cost him a shot at the House speakership, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA, later referred to by Donald Trump is “my Kevin”) owned up to his party’s cynical motive for the committee’s “investigation.” He said this:

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) characterized McCarthy’s words as a “stunning concession" which, he said, “reveals the truth that Republicans never dared admit in public. The core Republican goal in establishing the Benghazi committee was always to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and never to conduct an evenhanded search for the facts.”

Now that's a witch hunt. Despite what Trump people would prefer to believe, the investigations now under way by a special counsel and two congressional committees are not the result of non-evidence manufactured by political opponents or the media. They are the result of things he himself has said and done, and for which he is going to have to answer. 

That’s not a witch hunt.