CNN Panelist on Dems' Fake Impeachment: 'This Is Not a Benghazi-Type Hearing, This Is Really Serious'
CNN’s John Avlon suggested on Wednesday that former South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, who recently joined President Donald Trump’s legal team, would have to comport himself differently than he did during the Benghazi hearings because the impeachment inquiry is “serious stuff.”
The network showed a clip of Gowdy getting heated with an Obama administration official for failing to provide documents to Congress.
Poppy Harlow, another CNN host, introduced the clip as being from the Benghazi hearings.
The Media Research Center, however, reported that the exchange actually took place during a hearing on Operation Fast and Furious in June 2012, three months before the Benghazi attacks.
“The notion that you can withhold information and documents from Congress, no matter whether you’re the party in power or not in power is wrong,” Gowdy said.
“Respect for the rule of law must mean something irrespective of the vicissitudes of political cycles,” he added.
Harlow turned to Avlon and asked, “So Avlon, when he is asked, ‘Mr. Gowdy, where is the respect for the rule of law?’ What does he say?”
“I would love for Trey Gowdy to be consistent on this,” Avlon answered. “I’d love to see any philosophical consistency in Congress rather than pure situational ethics … because everyone is sort of knee-deep in hypocrisy on this stuff.”
“The problem is it is the Constitution at stake. This is not a Benghazi-type hearing, this is really serious stuff.”
Watch Avlon’s comments below.
A basic review of the facts is in order.
Both the Fast and Furious and Benghazi scandals, which happened during the Obama administration, resulted in the deaths of Americans.
Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to look into alleged corruption by Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, did not.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched Operation Fast and Furious in 2009. During the operation, the bureau allowed roughly 2,000 weapons to be sold illegally to suspected gun smugglers with the intent of tracing them to higher echelons of Mexican drug cartels, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The ATF lost track of hundreds of those firearms, many of which became linked to crimes, including the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010 near the Mexican border in Arizona.
An investigation by Congress into such an ill-conceived program certainly seemed in order.
But the Obama Justice Department stonewalled the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s request for documents.
The House voted to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt in June 2012 for failing to turn over the documents in question. Seventeen Democrats sided with Republicans in the vote, Politico reported.
The lower chamber then passed a resolution to sue the Justice Department to get the Fast and Furious documents, once again on a bipartisan basis, with 21 Democratic lawmakers joining their Republican colleagues.
As with Fast and Furious, the Obama administration failed to be forthright with the American people following the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost and CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya.
Four Americans died in the attacks, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens and Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, who were with the State Department under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice claimed the attacks were spontaneous, made by a mob provoked by an anti-Islamic video.
Clinton knew this was not true.
In a phone call with the Egyptian prime minister on Sept. 12, 2012, she said: “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.”
According to FactCheck.org, the very night of the attack, she emailed her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, writing: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow.”
Politifact reported that government inquiries determined that the State Department turned down repeated requests for more security from Ambassador Stevens and in fact reduced the security personnel on hand.
We should not forget that the attack occurred just months before the November 2012 election, in which President Barack Obama was seeking a second term.
In other words, the administration had every reason to try to cover up the facts surrounding the scandal.
Now let’s contrast these two true scandals with the current Democratic push to impeach Trump.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff have accused Trump of withholding military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country to open an investigation on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
At first, they alleged this quid pro quo was discussed on Trump’s July 25 call with the Ukrainian president.
Trump released the transcript of the call and there was no explicit quid pro quo discussed.
The president did direct the delay of military aid to Ukraine, but the country was not made aware of it until a month after his call with Zelensky.
That means that if Trump were seeking some sort of implied quid pro quo for an investigation of Biden, he was not very effective at communicating it.
Further, Zelensky told reporters at the United Nations last month that he did not feel pushed by Trump to investigate the alleged wrongdoing by Biden and his son.
Proof of the lack of feeling pressured is that Ukraine said it had not opened an investigation into the Bidens.
Moreover, Trump released the aid last month, nearly two weeks before the whistleblower story about the call broke, at the request of Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and other lawmakers.
Finally, unlike Fast and Furious and Benghazi, no one has died as a result of Trump’s asking Zelensky to look into the Bidens’ alleged misconduct.
Avlon needs to flip his analysis.
The Benghazi investigation was serious and necessary; the Trump “impeachment” inquiry is silly and frivolous.
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