The Republicans are at no loss to tell us, for going on eight months now, just HOW important an issue Benghazi really is.

It’s an issue so important, the GOP says, that a president simply cannot get his facts wrong without facing damning, incessant, condemnation.

It’s with that in mind that one has to ask why aspiring-president-wannabe Marco Rubio, who everyone thinks is gearing up for a White House run in 2016, didn’t even bother checking his Benghazi facts before going public and repeating Jonathan Karl’s lie about the now-debunked White House emails.

Marco Rubio publicly embraced Jonathan Karl’s Benghazi lie

Rubio committed the very sin that Republicans are accusing President Obama of: not bothering to get his facts straight before going public with the “truth” about Benghazi.

I’ve written about the overall issue before. About how Republicans in Congress told ABC reporter Jonathan Karl – falsely, we now know – that a White House email in their possession proved that the Obama administration put politics before all else when constructing their public response to the deadly attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya last September 11.

In fact, the congressional Republicans lied to ABC’s Karl, who then compounded the lie with one of his own, claiming to have personally seen the emails in question, when he had not.

On reading Karl’s false reporting, a number of key members of Congress, including Senator Rubio (R-FL), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, embraced the lie publicly. In Rubio’s case, he called for immediate hearings to investigate the new “facts” in Karl’s story:

John Boehner publicly embraced Jonathan Karl’s Benghazi lie

Rubio wasn’t the only Republican member of Congress to help amplify the GOP’s Benghazi lie. House Speaker John Boehner even tweeted the link to Karl’s phony story (which has now been corrected):

John McCain publicly embraced Jonathan Karl’s Benghazi lie

Even the co-ringleader of the Benghazi-truthers, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), repeated the lie by promoting Karl’s story.

Why didn’t Rubio bothering checking the facts?

Marco Rubio sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. That is one of the two committees in Congress (the House Intelligence Committee, being the other) briefed on the administration’s Benghazi emails in February and March of this year. The committees were also given copies of the emails in question. And who else was briefed on the emails in March? The Speaker’s staff.

So how is it that Marco Rubio and John Boehner publicly parroted Jonathan Karl’s lie in May when they and their staff were briefed on the actual emails in February and March?

Either Rubio and Boehner were willfully negligent, not even bothering to double-check the emails, which they had access too ever since the briefing, before going public. Or, Rubio and Boehner knew Jonathan Karl’s story was a lie, and repeated it anyway.

And worse, for all we know it was Rubio’s or Boehner’s staff that leaked the phony emails to Jonathan Karl in the first place. Karl won’t say who among congressional Republicans was trying to obstruct the Benghazi investigation by lying about the White House emails. But we do know, via CBS, that it was congressional Republicans who did the leaking and lying. Was it Rubio’s own staff? Was it the speaker’s?

So Marco Rubio, in essence, did exactly the same thing Republicans are accusing President Obama of having done: At best not doing his due diligence to get the Benghazi facts right, and at worst, presenting lies to the public.

And Rubio wants to be president?

Susan Rice was punished for getting it wrong. Rubio & GOP aren’t even interested in catching the leaker, let alone firing them.

When an Obama administration official, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, got the Benghazi facts wrong, the Republicans successfully torpedoed her appointment as Secretary of State. But when Marco Rubio and John Boehner commit the same sin, nothing happens. They don’t even try to catch the leaker/liar.

To quote Senator Rubio:

The families of those who were killed, and our diplomatic personnel deployed around the world who put their lives on the line on a daily basis deserve much better from their government.

Yes, they deserve it. But with Republicans, they rarely expect it.

Marco Rubio got his 3am call. It was about the most important issue of our age, if we’re to believe the Republicans. And rather than doing his due diligence, and simply checking the documents being held by his own committee before opining about them publicly, Marco Rubio relied on a reporter’s hearsay of a hearsay in order to form his public opinion about Benghazi. And he got it wrong.

Marco Rubio got his 3am call. And it was amateur hour for the man who barely merits being called Senator, let alone President.