More than two years, at least 33 hearings, $7 million dollars: That's how much time, effort and resources the government poured into investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack at the behest of Republicans. Now, only a couple of months into the investigations into Russia's involvement in the 2016 presidential election, Republicans are ready to throw in the towel. And worse, they're ignoring a Benghazi-like attack in Niger altogether.

On Russia, CNN reported this week that "in the House and Senate, several Republicans who sit on key committees are starting to grumble that the investigations have spanned the better part of the past nine months, contending that the Democratic push to extend the investigation well into next year could amount to a fishing expedition."

But Republicans are well-acquainted with election-year fishing expeditions. Four Americans were tragically killed in Benghazi, Libya's capital, and though it was (repeatedly) determined that no military reinforcements could have gotten there in time to save them, it served a harsh lesson in the importance of embassy security. Yet conservatives metamorphosed the attack into a rallying cry – first to stop Barack Obama's re-election and then to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.

Cartoons on President Trump and Russia View All 91 Images

Now, just as the lying man assumes everyone around him is a liar, Republicans so successfully politicized the Benghazi investigation that they now see all investigations as inherently political. The problem is that we actually do need to get to the bottom of Russia's involvement in our electoral system to protect the integrity of our democracy from attack by a foreign adversary. That's true no matter if Trump or Clinton sits in the Oval Office. (A fun – read: enraging – thought exercise is to imagine how much differently conservatives would be reacting to Russian involvement in the 2016 election if Clinton had won, but I digress.)

The simple fact is that Russia meddled in 2016, and the Kremlin will certainly plan to do so again in 2018 and 2020; the only way to stop them is to root out what all they did and how they did it. Indeed, so much is breaking daily revealing how widespread Russian involvement in 2016 was that it feels impossible to absorb it all. You might as well try drinking from a firehose.

Just this week, we learned that Donald Trump Jr., the president's son, and White House adviser Kellyanne Conway promoted tweets from a Russian bot (purporting to represent Tennessee Republicans) promoting Trump's candidacy in the days before the election. The full extent of Russia's propaganda campaign on Facebook and Twitter is still unknown, though Twitter is in the process of turning suspected-Russian accounts over to the Senate. There's evidence the Kremlin utilized Google, YouTube and even Pinterest to spread disinformation and bash Hillary Clinton. An estimated 10 million people viewed Russian ads on Facebook, according to documents turned over to Congress. Some of these ads directly targeted voters in battleground states Wisconsin and Michigan. States are still finding out whether they were targeted by Russian hackers, 10 months after election day. To date, we know Russia was active in the election systems of at least 21 states.

That's just scratching the surface of what happened last year, and what could happen again if Republicans dismiss these investigations.

Clearly it's politically expedient for Republicans to get the Russian albatross off their necks. 2018 looms, and these warnings about future foreign interference don't quite resonate with the voters the same way tangible issues like immigration and tax reform do.

But why then are Republicans also avoiding any investigation – and so far, hardly any mention at all – of the recent attack in Niger, which is depressingly reminiscent of Benghazi?

At the beginning of the month, four U.S. Green Berets were killed in Niger when they were ambushed by at least 50 Islamic State group-linked militants. CBS News reported, "The U.S. Africa Command is investigating whether any of the soldiers could have been saved if they had been evacuated more quickly."

It's early, but so far it sounds strikingly similar to what happened in Benghazi, with one notable absence: Republican outrage. As CNN's S.E. Cupp succinctly put it, "If you wanted answers about Benghazi, you should want answers about Niger."

Except they don't. Trump himself was one of the loudest proponents of the Benghazi investigation, even years after the attack took place:

Benghazi. Obama lied. Our people died. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2013

We still have not learned the full truth on Benghazi. Four Americans were killed. Congress must act! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2013

Don't forget Benghazi. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2012

He and other Republicans repeatedly demonized Obama for not calling Benghazi a terrorist attack (even though he did) the day after the attack from the Rose Garden. Trump, in contrast, didn’t publicly mention the Niger attacks for 12 days. And when he was asked about it, his response was to attack his predecessors’ treatment of Gold Star families, and praise his own. The weekend after the attack, Trump went golfing.