Democrats use Fox News to fact check Darrell Issa
House Democrats are turning to an unlikely source to rebut allegations by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa: Fox News. For the last several months, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have largely played catch-up to a steady stream of allegations by Issa related to the Obama administration’s handling of last year’s terrorist attack in Benghazi, ...
House Democrats are turning to an unlikely source to rebut allegations by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa: Fox News.
House Democrats are turning to an unlikely source to rebut allegations by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa: Fox News.
For the last several months, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have largely played catch-up to a steady stream of allegations by Issa related to the Obama administration’s handling of last year’s terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
Now they’re using Fox News, the cable channel that has devoted the most air time to Obama’s Benghazi critics, to rebut Issa’s allegations, including claims that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally denied State Department security requests in Benghazi and that partisan motivations drove the editing of talking points used by United Nations ambassador Susan Rice. The video by House Democrats appears below:
As you can see, it splices clips with Issa followed by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace challenging the allegations:
WALLACE: Turns out that every cable that goes from the State Department has Hillary Clinton’s name… hundreds of thousands of cables … millions of cables. The Washington Post looked into this and called the allegation by the House Republican chairman a whopper."
[…]
WALLACE: In defense of the White House … there is no indication in any of these emails of any partisan deleting, scrubbing of the facts.
In a statement to The Cable, Issa spokesman Frederick Hill dismissed the video, saying "Cobbling together a few selectively misleading clips that omit key media findings, such the Washington Post Fact Checker assigning four Pinocchios to President Obama for his claim that called the attacks an ‘act of terrorism,’ aren’t going to change anyone’s mind about the importance of this investigation or hinder the committee from pursuing the relevant facts." He also pointed to a recent Gallup public opinion poll showing that 52 percent of respondents "strongly agree" that issues being raised in the Benghazi hearings need to be investigated.
The next major flashpoint between Republicans and Democrats on Benghazi will likely center on a forthcoming House Oversight hearing in which Amb. Thomas Pickering, the co-chair of the Accountability Review Board on Benghazi, answers questions from Republican lawmakers as to why his investigation didn’t criticize higher-level State Department officials for security failures in Benghazi. In advance of the hearing, Pickering attended a closed-door deposition with the committee’s investigators today, something he agreed to only after Issa subpoenaed him.
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