WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) announced Wednesday night that he would be leading his House Select Committee that is investigating the September 11th, 2012 attack on a consular building in Benghazi, Libya down a new investigative path — the connection between the attacks in Benghazi and Planned Parenthood.
Gowdy’s announcement comes hot on the heels of he and his fellow House Republicans voting to strip $450 million from the low-cost healthcare provider after highly-edited videos were released last year allegedly showing Planned Parenthood officials negotiating sale prices for fetal tissues and organs. That claim has not been substantiated by any independent fact checking agencies, but the groundswell of ire that erupted in conservative circles pushed Republicans in congress to take it up as a cause.
“Is there a connection between the attacks that fateful night and the highly-doctored videos that have put Planned Parenthood in my party’s ideological cross hairs,” Gowdy asked reporters rhetorically at a press conference, “sure of course there is. There might not be any evidence for it, but when the hell has a lack of evidence ever stopped one of our conspiracy theories from being floated, ginned up and established as official Republican lore?”
Gowdy pointed to the fact that many Republican voters still genuinely believe that former President Bill Clinton and his wife, current Democratic presidential front runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conspired to kill their former friend, Vince Foster, as evidence that right-wing conspiracy theories “need no factual sustenance,” has he put it. “Maybe all I’ll do is waste millions more dollars chasing another windmill,” Gowdy admitted, “but as a conservative Republican, isn’t my job to rail against government excess while simultaneously spending excessive amounts of money on political theater?” No one answered Gowdy’s rhetorical question.
“The bottom line here is actually very simple,” Gowdy said, “and it’s so simple even my constituents can understand it. President Obama may be a lame duck president, but Hillary Clinton could very well be our next president. That makes my job — finding things to smear her and ultimately convince our rabid base she needs to be impeached for — tremendously more difficult. Luckily we have these doctored videos, and Hillary’s already come out in support of Planned Parenthood. So all I really have to do is say the words ‘Benghazi’ and ‘Planned Parenthood’ in the same sentence, mix-in a Hillary reference, and bing-bang-boom…I’ve got a fresh scandal to investigate. God, isn’t America fantastic?”
