White House blasts GOP Benghazi report

The White House met the House Republicans' Benghazi report released Tuesday with dripping disdain, suggesting that the Republican National Committee ought to "disclose" the 800-page document, the result of two years and $7 million, as a campaign contribution.

"It seems as this point that there are, after eight different congressional inquiries have now been conducted into this matter, it seems that there is only one remaining question, and it’s simply this: Is the RNC going to disclose the in-kind contribution that they have received from House Republicans today?" press secretary Josh Earnest remarked in response to the first question of the briefing.


"Maybe we should have a congressional committee formed to take a look at that," he said minutes later.

The report, Earnest continued, was "a $7 million effort, funded by taxpayers, to do what the would-be speaker of the House said was their goal, which was to tear down Secretary Clinton’s poll numbers," in reference to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) commenting in an interview last September that the Benghazi panel's questioning drove down Clinton's poll numbers. The Republican backlash to McCarthy's comments — which Democrats treated as a political gift — contributed to his decision to pull out of the race for speaker of the House the following week.

Questioned about the report's claim that the military was slow to respond to the Benghazi attacks, Earnest remarked that "this has been thoroughly debunked by previous Republican-led investigations in the Congress."

"So I'm not going to get into the back and forth, because frankly, Republicans have already done that," Earnest said, noting past questions being raised about that assertion. "There's plenty of churn just to review what Republicans have concluded about this incident."

As far as whether the report should represent an end to the investigations, Earnest remarked, "I thought it was over after the first five investigations. This was the eighth.”

"I think there are a lot of people who thought that after the first or the second or the third or the fourth or the fifth or the sixth or the seventh investigation, that that might be the end of it. Republicans have clearly discerned a political motive, and to their credit, at least they were pretty blunt about it," Earnest said, making reference to McCarthy once more, adding that Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) made similar remarks.