Stephan Savoia/AP
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slammed House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for creating a select committee to investigate the deaths of four American officials in Benghazi. In an e-mail to supporters Friday, Warren called the committee “shameful” and “no-holds-barred political theater,” accusing the GOP of exploiting a tragedy for political gain. And for Warren, it’s a bit personal.
In the email, Warren notes that she is particularly concerned about Boehner’s selection of Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) to chair committee. She recalls testifying before Gowdy in 2011 when she was setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “I know a little bit about the way Trey Gowdy pursues oversight,” she writes. “I was on the other end of it when I was setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and I was called to testify before the House.”
Warren says Gowdy lacked basic knowledge of the new agency and was a grand-stander, pushing empty political points rather than conducting a serious investigation. She goes out of her way to make Gowdy appear foolish, quoting a Huffington Post account of the hearing that describes Gowdy as mistakenly suggesting that Warren had written rules that were, in fact, direct quotes from a bill passed by Congress.
Warren continues:
As a Senator, I take oversight seriously because it is powerfully important. But Trey Gowdy gives oversight a bad name. The House GOP is on a waste-of-time-and-resources witch hunt and fundraising sideshow, shamefully grasping for any straw to make President Obama, former Secretary Clinton, or Secretary Kerry look bad. This stunt does a disservice to those who serve our country abroad, and it distracts us from issues we should be taking up on behalf of the American people.
With millions of people still out of work and millions more working full time yet still living below the poverty line, with students drowning in debt, with roads and bridges crumbling, is this really what the House Republicans are choosing to spend their time on? Even for guys who have so few solutions to offer that they have voted 54 times to repeal Obamacare, this is a new low.
Democrats are currently debating whether they should boycott the new committee. Unlike past panels of this sort, the Benghazi committee does not have equal representation from both parties, skewing seven-to-five in favor of the Republicans. Though Warren wouldn’t have any direct involvement—the committee is a House-only project—her e-mail blast makes it clear that she’s siding with her House counterparts who think the investigation is a sham.
