Boehner Explains Decision To Appoint Special Committee: “A Line Was Crossed” (Video)

House Speaker Boehner laid out the details for the proposed House investigative committee, Tuesday night, “calling for a 7-5 split between Republicans and Democrats — drawing a stern response from Democrats who said that is unfair and taints the investigation from the start.”

Via The Washington Times: 

Mr. Boehner said the committee won’t have a set deadline for finishing its investigation, but will go until it has the answers to questions about the run-up to the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya, the administration’s handling of the attack, and the White House’s effort to shape public perception of the attack afterward.

“It is unfortunate that it has to come to this, but when four Americans are killed by terrorists in a well-coordinated assault, the American people will not tolerate the evasion we have seen from the White House,” the speaker said.

He said the investigation had to have an open-ended timeframe because the Obama administration has demonstrated it isn’t willing to cooperate.

His resolution, which Republicans are preparing for floor action later this week, would give the committee chairman — whom Mr. Boehner has said would be Rep. Trey Gowdy — the power to issue subpoenas.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi objected to the outlines of the committee makeup and powers.  

“If this review is to be fair, it must be truly bipartisan,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The panel should be equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, as is done on the House Ethics Committee.”Democrats have objected to the outlines of the committee makeup and powers.

In 2007, the House created a Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. As Speaker, Pelosi set up the structure. There were nine Democrats and six Republicans. “The House has a long history of creating Select Committees focused on crucial issues,” Pelosi said in a statement. “With a large number of committees exercising jurisdiction over issues affecting energy and climate, the Select Committee will provide the coordination of information on these critical issues.”

Now Pelosi wants an even split between the parties. And that is if Democrats even participate. In her statement today, Pelosi said the new Benghazi committee “should require that witnesses are called and interviewed, subpoenas are issued, and information is shared on a bipartisan basis. Only then could it be fair.” Pelosi seemed to indicate that Democrats will take part in the select committee, but other Democrats are calling for their party to boycott the panel. As it turns out, Pelosi has a record of doing just that.

Here are Congressman Trey Gowdy’s feelings on the matter, as expressed to Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, yesterday.  “I can tell you this. It is not going to be evenly constituted and when she was Speaker Pelosi, she certainly showed no interests in having an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. We’re in the majority. That may or may not be the case after November but we’re in the majority right now and we’re in the majority for a reason. And I just find it interesting that people’s ability to do math changes when they go from being the Speaker to the Minority Leader.”

MARTHA: So what, tell me what composition you see on this select committee? What would you like it to be?

GOWDY: Well, the Speaker is going to decide that. Something in the 10-7 range or like what we have with other committees now. Every committee of Congress is constituted with more Republicans than Democrats because there are more Republicans than Democrats. And I hasten to add, every committee in the Senate is constituted with more Democrats than Republicans. I mean there are consequences to elections

Shorter Gowdy: “We won.” Put that in your crack pipes and smoke it, Obama fans.

On Wednesday, Boehner explained what tipped the scales for him to favor a Select Committee, citing the recently-released Ben Rhodes emails, and the Regime’s continual stonewall of Congress.

“It’s clear that we need to proceed,” he said. “Most of you know that I continued to believe until last week that our four committees investigating Benghazi had done a very good job. But a line was crossed last week.”

“One, when it became more clear when it became clear that the White House played a more significant role in the development of how they were going to describe this – certainly more than anything that has been disclosed, thus far, and secondly when it became clear that   documents had been handed over to a private organization that frankly had been blocked in terms of giving them to us.”

“This is all about getting to the truth,” he continued. “Our system of government depends on transparency and accountability. We owe it to the future of our country and to the next administration to do our job — To make it clear that the types of activities that may have gone on here, are not acceptable in our system of government.”  

SEE ALSO:

Human Events: SEN. TED CRUZ ISSUES NEW REPORT ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S ABUSES OF POWER:

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Wednesday released the fourth in his series of reports on the Obama Administration’s abuses of power.  Pronouncing the President’s “willingness to disregard the written law, and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat” one of the most dangerous aspects of his tenure in office, Cruz emphasizes the importance of the rule of law  – which, properly understood, should restrain the ambitions of politicians, not become a cudgel in their hands – and needles his adversaries for accepting abuses from a Democrat that they would never tolerate from a Republican.

Cruz is determined to make the case that Obama is setting dangerous precedents for future executives of any political affiliation, because as he memorably puts it, “When a president can pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore, he is no longer a president.”  He follows this up with several carefully-sourced pages of such picking and choosing.  This is not one of those reports that reads like a campaign speech or political tract – it’s ten pages of bullet-point citations with links to supporting media, all of which is available online.

The Conversation: The Left Continues Its Efforts To ‘Controversialize’ Benghazi Probe:

On Fox and Friends, Monday, former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson explained that White House flacks were engaged in a “well-orchestrated strategy to controversialize” the recent coverage of the Benghazi scandal.

 The key words they use, such as ‘conspiracy’ and ‘delusional,’ are in my opinion clearly designed to try to controversialize a story — a legitimate news story and a legitimate area of journalistic inquiry.”

 “I see that as a well-orchestrated strategy,” she added, “to controversialize a story they really don’t want to hear about.”

This is a strategy they’ve had a degree of success with over the years. Even conservatives shy away from stories about Obama’s inconsistent birth narrative, yet the president recently mocked Fox News for supposedly being obsessed with it. (They never have been.)

The idea is to make a topic toxic through ridicule.

On Twitter, you see various Dems running with the Regime’s new “Benghazi is a joke” narrative.

Duane Lester of the Missouri Torch caught A Missouri Democrat using Benghazi as a punchline.

The Washington Examiner: The four Ds of the Democrats’ Benghazi strategy: Deny, Delay, Disrupt, Discredit:

President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress and the mainstream media face a huge problem in House Speaker John Boehner‘s decision to appoint a select committee headed by Rep. Trey Gowdy to investigate the Benghazi scandal.

Gowdy is a former prosecutor who has demonstrated beyond any doubt in his work on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he means business. Don’t be deceived by the Southern manners and the “Yes Ma’ams” and “No sirs.”

So Democrats will spare no effort to make Gowdy’s life miserable and the work of the panel impossible to complete.