WASHINGTON — The doors into Room 1100 of the Longworth House Office Building were completely surrounded, reporters of many nationalities pointing their cameras for glimpses of the stars of the Select Committee on Benghazi.
Tom Fitton slipped through the gauntlet without a single flash going off. The president of Judicial Watch could take credit — and did — for Thursday’s circus. It was Judicial Watch that sued the State Department for e-mails that found White House aides collaborating on talking points about the attack, and it was those e-mails that had prodded the Republican majority to create the select committee.
Fitton looked upon his work — and despaired. It was a good day for Judicial Watch’s special Benghazi Snapchat filter (“This message will disappear just like Hillary Clinton’s e-mails”) but a mixed day in his battle for accountability.
“It’s disappointing that a year and a half plus after the committee was appointed, we’re finally having a significant public hearing,” Fitton said after a few hours inside the room. “I don’t think that’s what people expected when the select committee was appointed.”
The former secretary of state’s epic testimony and interrogation had been years in the making. Some conservatives, including Fitton, had been suing the Clintons for information since the 1990s. Some Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Benghazi committee chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, had been nervous about a blue-ribbon investigation being perceived as electioneering or a vendetta.
Former Virginia congressman Tom Davis, a Republican who presided over House Oversight hearings on doping in baseball, left praising the “A-game” of both Gowdy and Clinton.
“This is the most exciting thing since the steroids (hearings)!” he said.
