The Truth About Benghazi Is Finally Going to Be Exposed

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You remember Lamar Smith, don’t you? He’s the nutbag congressman from Texas who’s been harassing NOAA because they’ve published papers saying the climate has warmed up. Smith knows that climate change is a hoax, so he wants NOAA to turn over vast troves of email that his staff can trawl for evidence of the government’s massive conspiracy to fudge the data.

So far NOAA hasn’t cooperated, but Smith can harass them because he’s the chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. Climate change is science,1 so that puts it squarely in his bailiwick.

But there’s more to science than climate change. You know what else is science? Cybersecurity. And do you know one of the key cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the US government? Email servers. And do you know who used private email servers a few years ago? Hillary Clinton. And do you know what she was writing emails about? Benghazi. So that means Benghazi falls under Smith’s jurisdiction:

Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Wednesday launched his own investigation of Clinton’s private email server, invoking the panel’s jurisdiction over cybersecurity issues. The new investigation will focus on the private IT companies involved in maintaining the Clinton server.

….The Smith probe, according to three letters sent to the company’s involved with the server, will focus on Colorado-based Platte River, which housed Clinton’s server after she left State; Datto, the Connecticut-based back-up company they used as a backstop; and SECNAP, a Florida company that provided cybersecurity for her server.

It’s about damn time, if you ask me. John Boehner wouldn’t allow investigations like this because he was scared it would make congressional Republicans look like idiots. That’s typical Boehner. Just another gutless Beltway sellout. But Paul Ryan is running things differently, and now Smith has been unleashed. Finally, we’ll get the truth.

And please: no whining about how this is obviously just a witch hunt designed to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Oversight is one of Congress’s most solemn duties. The truth is out there, folks.

1Supposedly, anyway.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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