Benghazi is Libya's second largest city, a seaport on the Mediterranean, once sharing capital status with Tripoli, it is a city of around 700,000 population, important to the Libyan, and North African, economies.
It has become, in American lingo, the symbolic term representing the multiple investigations into former Secretary of State and Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Investigations launched by Republicans into the attack on an American consulate in the city while Clinton was Secretary of State initiated the famed "e-mail scandal" as a result of the claim, which subsequent investigations determined was unfounded and without evidence, that she sent classified information over her private email server to state department staffers.
It was an egregious example of the use of an "investigation" rather than any evidence or results of an investigation, as part of a political campaign against a candidate. From the beginning, with the questioned E-mail server in hand, all of the emails between Clinton and her staff that had been sent, along with the changing number of "missing emails" that Trump kept harping about, were in possession of those conducting the investigation and they knew, according to the record, fairly early in the process that no classified material had been sent over the private server. They knew that no laws had been violated, though some nebulous state department protocols or policies may have been.
But the continuous investigation was a political liability and as unethical as it was to keep it going knowing what the eventual outcome would be, there were Republicans who just didn't think there was a problem with that.
My mother, raised on a farm, loved to use the expression, "The chickens are coming home to roost." Indeed, they certainly are.
Prior to leading his rallies in chants of "lock her up," Trump always mentioned the "missing emails." It would be the twenty-thousand, twenty-five thousand, thirty thousand, he was never consistent in mentioning how many there were, but he always wanted to know where they were. The investigators knew, of course, had read them, and considered them irrelevant to the case. The question from Trump, of course, was rhetorical.
The "Missing Emails" are Apparently No Big Deal
Now that the careless treatment of classified information has turned out to be a regular Trump habit, "lock him up" is the more appropriate choice of words. Not only did Trump use all kinds of unauthorized and illegal means to transmit classified information, including his own cell phone and twitter account, but a lot of it made its way out of the White House through the Washington, DC sewer system. Other bits and pieces were sent via personal email to his children and his son-in-law, and during the move out of the White House, found their way to Mar-a-Lago. Clearly Trump was really not concerned at all about the security of Hillary's emails, beyond their usefulness in campaigning.
That's going to be a huge problem for him, now.
I Have No Words
The Republican silence, especially those who were responsible for those investigations and who helped keep the lies circulating around the term "investigation" is a clear demonstration of the complete and total lack of integrity among Republicans. Integrity is no longer a respected, important value in our society anyway, and all that talk about family values, starting with Reagan, by the GOP has been sacrificed to the goal of hanging on to political power.
Democrats have to learn how to take advantage of these wonderful gifts being handed to them on a silver platter. If Clinton had exhibited even a small fraction of the carelessness of Trump when it comes to handling Presidential communication and classified material directly related to the security of the United States Republican heads would have exploded over it. All that talk about who,potentially, could have had access to that material and what they would have done with it opened the door for accusing Clinton of giving state secrets away to America's enemies.
Give that some careful thought for just a minute. Trump is leaking classified info all over the place. This is the guy who claims a close relationship with the Communist dictator of North Korea, the ex-communist autocratic dictator of Russia, and who wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David. Who do you think has their hands on tons of sensitive, classified information and grabbed it from the former President? Almost anyone in the world that wanted it.
I'd like to see a lot of Democrats stepping up and taking advantage of this right now.
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