GOP Lawmakers Reject Findings Of Other GOP Lawmakers On Benghazi

According to MSNBC, some GOP lawmakers on the panel of the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee described the findings of their recent report on the 2012 attack in Benghazi as “definitive.”

Every question has been answered. Every conspiracy theory has been looked at.

Every House committee, every Senate committee, every State Department investigator, and every inquiry launched by independent news organizations have reached the exact same conclusion.

There may be a general feeling, even among many Republicans, that it’s time to just move on.

But that’s not going to happen. Not only is the House on track to spend at last another $1.5 million – of our money – on yet another committee, but many GOP lawmakers have decided to reject the findings of other GOP lawmakers.

Notable politicians such as Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul have been rejecting the findings of the report from members of their own party.

As Simon Maloy noted, Republican senator Rand Paul even proceeded to suggest his own GOP allies may be “helping the Obama administration cover-up the truth about Benghazi.”

According to the Huffington Post, millions in taxpayer money have been spent on the several Benghazi investigations that have been conducted over the past couple of years.

Huff Post Poll Shows Most People Have No Idea What A House Benghazi Investigation Just Found

When the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee released a report on the Friday before Thanksgiving clearing U.S. officials of multiple accusations leveled after the 2012 Benghazi attacks, it didn’t seem to get the public’s attention.

Eighty-four percent of Americans said they had heard little or nothing about the report’s release, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll.

Just 28 percent knew the investigation didn’t find evidence of intelligence failures before the attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, or wrongdoing in officials’ response to the attacks.

A nearly equal 25 percent thought the report found wrongdoing. The remaining 47 percent weren’t sure.

Partisanship (obviously) had a lot to do with people’s guesses as to what the report said.

Although Republicans were significantly more likely than others to say they had paid at least some attention to the results of the investigation, they were also the most likely to get it wrong, saying by a 10-point margin that it blamed, rather than absolved, U.S. officials.

Democrats, by a 20-point margin, said it vindicated the officials, while those independents who offered an opinion were about evenly split.

Opinions on how the Obama administration handled the Benghazi attacks two years ago also remain split along party lines. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say the administration deliberately misled the American people, by 79 percent to 19 percent.

The House committee found that early wrong statements by Obama administration officials were caused by conflicting information rather than purposeful deception.

As recently as this June, most Americans supported further investigation into Benghazi, and while the GOP’s interest has long outpaced that of other groups, overall focus on the story has been low for many months.

In 2013, a Gallup poll found that just 21 percent of Americans were paying very close attention to congressional hearings on the attacks. By June 2014, the number had moved down to 19 percent.