The Truth About Benghazi Is Finally Going to Be Exposed

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You remember Lamar Smith, don’t you? He’s the nutbag congressman from Texas who’s been harassing NOAA because they’ve published papers saying the climate has warmed up. Smith knows that climate change is a hoax, so he wants NOAA to turn over vast troves of email that his staff can trawl for evidence of the government’s massive conspiracy to fudge the data.

So far NOAA hasn’t cooperated, but Smith can harass them because he’s the chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Climate change is science,1 so that puts it squarely in his bailiwick.

But there’s more to science than climate change. You know what else is science? Cybersecurity. And do you know one of the key cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the US government? Email servers. And do you know who used private email servers a few years ago? Hillary Clinton. And do you know what she was writing emails about? Benghazi. So that means Benghazi falls under Smith’s jurisdiction:

Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Wednesday launched his own investigation of Clinton’s private email server, invoking the panel’s jurisdiction over cybersecurity issues. The new investigation will focus on the private IT companies involved in maintaining the Clinton server.

….The Smith probe, according to three letters sent to the company’s involved with the server, will focus on Colorado-based Platte River, which housed Clinton’s server after she left State; Datto, the Connecticut-based back-up company they used as a backstop; and SECNAP, a Florida company that provided cybersecurity for her server.

It’s about damn time, if you ask me. John Boehner wouldn’t allow investigations like this because he was scared it would make congressional Republicans look like idiots. That’s typical Boehner. Just another gutless Beltway sellout. But Paul Ryan is running things differently, and now Smith has been unleashed. Finally, we’ll get the truth.

And please: no whining about how this is obviously just a witch hunt designed to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Oversight is one of Congress’s most solemn duties. The truth is out there, folks.

1Supposedly, anyway.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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