It’s official: the Republican-controlled House’s kangaroo court “investigation” into the Benghazi attacks has now gone on longer than any other congressional inquiry in history, at a cost to taxpayers of $4.5 million and counting.
Under the guise of investigating 2012’s tragic attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, the committee has become a publicly-funded platform for Republicans to launch political attacks against the Obama administration and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“The Benghazi Select Committee has now become one of the longest and least active congressional investigations in history,” said Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, in a statement. “The Committee has squandered the last 16 months and more than 4.5 million taxpayer dollars dredging up political attacks to impact the 2016 presidential election — a severe misuse of taxpayer funds and Congressional power.”
Spending by the Benghazi Select Committee has already outpaced the entire annual budget of the House Intelligence Committee, with the Benghazi Committee’s 18 GOP staffers enjoying an average full-time salary of more than $128,000 per year.
The previous record-holder for longest congressional investigation was the Watergate probe in the 1970s. In comparison, congressional investigations into the attack on Pearl Harbor, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the Iran-Contra scandal all took less than a year to complete.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there’s any end in sight, with Clinton scheduled to testify before the committee on October 22.
For more on this, read ABC News House Benghazi Probe Longest in Congressional History.
