That email release from the White House is proving to be a real
problem for Republicans. Earlier reports showed that versions of emails
leaked by the GOP had been selectively edited, smearing the State
Department and the administration with incomplete information that left
an inaccurate impression of the email conversations.
Now it turns out that it’s much worse than lies of omission. The Republican version contain outright lies.
CBS News:
…On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from Rhodes:
“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities,
including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine
the FBI investigation.”
But it turns out that in the actual email, Rhodes did not mention the State Department.
It read: “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.”
Republicans also provided what they said was a quote from an email written by State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland.
The Republican version quotes Nuland discussing, “The penultimate
point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by
the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda’s presence and activities of al-Qaeda.”
The actual email from Nuland says: “The penultimate point could be
abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention
to Agency warnings.”
As I pointed out earlier,
Benghazi is rapidly spinning out of Republican control.
The ever escalating hype has finally inflated their Benghazi conspiracy
theory to the point that the facts can’t possibly support it, so the
facts must be abandoned that now the whole thing is propped up almost
entirely by fiction.
The question is what are they going to do
now? You don’t make shit like this up if you have anything concrete. By
leaking these phony emails (
and there is no doubt the GOP leaked them)
, they practically admit that the whole thing is frosting — there’s no
cake here. If anyone has an “editing the talking points” scandal brewing
here, it’s the elephant party.
And Darrell Issa’s going to
stretch this thing out until 2014? That ought to go well. The whole
thing’s in a tailspin now. Keeping it up in the air that long would be a
good trick in itself. Keeping from crashing directly into Republican
Party HQ and leveling the place would be an even better one.