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White House refuses Benghazi questions for Obama

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The latest back-and-forth comes as the panel is wrapping up work on its long-running investigation.

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The White House and the House Select Committee on Benghazi are at a standoff over whether President Barack Obama should answer a series of questions about the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead.

Neil Eggleston, counsel to the president, blasted the committee for sending the president a list of questions about the attack — an inquiry the administration deemed inappropriate and a partisan attempt to frame the White House as uncooperative.

Eggleston has encouraged Obama not to answer the committee’s questions “because of the implications of his response on the constitutional separation of powers,” according to a letter sent Saturday to Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and obtained by POLITICO.

“If the president were to answer your questions, his response would suggest that Congress has the unilateral power to demand answers from the president about his official acts,” the letter reads.

Eggleston also accused the panel of asking questions it already knew the answer to — something the committee denies.

And Gowdy’s panel criticized the White House’s response as unhelpful to its investigation. Committee members have been trying to answer several unresolved questions before releasing their final report in the coming weeks.

“It’s no surprise President Obama would rather take questions from Derek Jeter than answer questions for the American people about the Benghazi terrorist attacks, which followed what he himself has called his worst mistake — failing to plan for what happened after the State Department pushed U.S. intervention in Libya,” said committee spokesman Jamal Ware, referring to Obama’s chat a few days ago with the former New York Yankee. “The White House’s fictional narrative today is the latest chapter of the story it has been spinning since 2012, when four of our fellow citizens were murdered by Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in the tragic terrorist attacks in Benghazi.”

The latest back-and-forth comes as the panel is wrapping up work on its investigation, which has lasted more than two years. Gowdy has said he would release the report this summer, and many believe the report will drop before the mid-July 2016 party conventions kick off.

While the report’s findings are still under wraps, the panel is insisting it has unanswered questions from the administration.

Democrats knocked the committee for just now sending its questions.

“Republicans waited more than two years — until right before the presidential conventions — to send their questions to the White House, and they concealed them from Select Committee Democrats,” said panel Democrats’ spokesman Paul Bell. “That tells you all you need to know, and the White House is right to see this for exactly what it is — a last-ditch partisan stunt.”

Gowdy told Eggleston two years ago, in 2014, that he would at some point wish to ask the president a series of questions about the attack — not by compelling an appearance but via written inquiry. Gowdy again brought it up at a face-to-face meeting with Eggleston, his deputy and a top White House congressional liaison in Charlotte, North Carolina, in January 2016. He even offered to show the White House the questions in advance and provide the underlying testimony that led the panel to ask such questions, sources say.

In response, Eggleston detailed Obama’s actions the night of the attack in a May 11 letter. He said Obama was briefed by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at 5 p.m. and “immediately ordered the military to deploy all available assets.”

The May 11 letter also said that Eggleston’s staff briefed the panel on its “specific questions as to whether there was any evidence of direction from the White House or National Security Council to delay taking action,” a notion that Eggleston’s staff rejected.

“The president did not modify or rescind that order,” he added.

“Any claim that the president was not fully engaged and informed the night of the attacks and any doubt about his direction that any and all action be taken to assist our people under attack are unfounded and belied by the facts,” the May letter read.

Gowdy on June 7 sent more than a dozen questions seeking more detail on various questions about Benghazi. He wanted to know, for example, if Obama ever authorized covert actions to provide weapons to Libyan rebels; if the president had ever personally viewed the surveillance footage of the attack; when Obama learned of the identities of terrorists involved that day; and whether he was aware of “any efforts by White House and Department of Defense official during [the attack] to reach out to YouTube and Terry Jones regarding an anti-Muslim video?”

Gowdy never got a response. Eggleston instead sharply criticized the panel’s motives for sending the inquiry.

“Your decision to send this letter raises serious questions about the legitimacy of your purported investigatory interests,” Eggleston wrote. “I told you that I would advise the President not to respond to your questions. … Your decision to send your list of questions after receiving information that answered several of them, and knowing I would advise the president not to answer, raises questions about your motives.”

A senior GOP Benghazi panel source said the claim that Congress lacks constitutional authority to ask a question of Obama is “difficult to understand.”

“We’re not saying the president can be forced to answer these questions, nor was that ever discussed or contemplated,” the source said. “We were simply asking questions rooted in new interviews and new documents. It is up the president how and whether to respond.”

Eggleston in the letter says his staff “engaged in good faith with yours to understand what information your committee sought from the president” and that he sent a letter providing information about the president’s activities the night of the attack, referring to the May 11 White House missive.

The panel says the questions from June 7 weren’t a repeat. For example, the committee asked Obama when he first learned of the attack. Eggleston had responded that he was briefed about 5 p.m. But the panel says that was a previously scheduled meeting about an unrelated topic, and the panel says the reply doesn’t answer the question about when Obama first became aware of the attack, which started at 3:42 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

The panel says the White House is just putting up a defensive wall.

“Benghazi Committee Democrats and their friends at the White House, Pentagon and State Department will no doubt stick to their playbook of partisan slander, mischaracterizations and pointless stunts meant to distract from the facts they’d rather the American people and the families of those lost never know,” Ware continued in his statement to POLITICO. “But there is no statute of limitations on the truth, and they cannot stop the committee from providing the full and most comprehensive accounting of what happened before, during and after Benghazi.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/white-house-benghazi-obama-224813
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