Thread by @kurteichenwald

1. Pathetic and hilarious. GOPrs and Trump are whining that the testimonies of witnesses in impeachment proceedings are behind closed doors. Yet simultaneously chastise these witnesses about classified info, which is to be secret.

Then, they say they would *never* do this....

2...why, they would not conduct such interviews behind closed doors and they CERTAINLY wouldn't leak.

No. Instead theyd lie about what was said on Fox News.

As always, lets go to the Benghazi hearings, the first time GOP used foreign events to try to manipulate an election...

3...this is the problem with GOP anytime they scream about something in regards to these hearings - you can find they did the exact same, only worse, during the Benghazi hearings.

Now, before getting into details, this is not a "whatabout." It's pointing out how this GOP...

4...argument on proper procedure has been completely invalidated by their previous behavior.

Witnesses in the impeachment hearings could be talking about classified info. Most witnesses in Benghazi hearing were not. But Gowdy - the hack - declared that *he* would designate...

5...what was classified, even if the intelligence agencies said they were not. And what did he declare? Virtually everything. Then he moved on to say he didn't want witnesses to know what others were saying - which is absurd, since there was nothing prohibiting witnesses from...

6...talking to each other.

So let's take one bit of testimony: Sidney Blumenthal, long time friend of Hillary Clinton who emailed her bits of advice periodically. To this day, Blumenthal's testimony - delivered in secret - has not been released. Why? Because it had next to...

7...nothing to do with Benghazi, but was all about how GOPrs were described in the press. Most of the secret testimony was grilling Blumenthal about what he had said about GOPrs in various press reports. Remember, this was supposed to be hearings about a terror attack. Instead...

8...and...

9...democratic members of there committee demanded that the Blumenthal testimony be released (which would show the GOPrs to be more concerned about their press than the Benghazi attack.) But of course, they refused. Forever.

But that didn't stop them from running on TV to...

10...falsely characterize what was said. Impeachment witness @SecPompeo Mike Pompeo - yes, he plays into this too - went on TV and lied to spin a GOP conspiracy theory, saying, based on the testimony, Blumenthal was running State Department, not Clinton. He was called out on it..

@SecPompeo 11...and Pompeo wasn't done yet. He said evidence showed (it did not) that Blumenthal - one of many times that the GOP just once again happened to spin the portrayal of the secret, conniving Jew running the world - had, as a private citizen, imposed a no-fly zone over Libya...

@SecPompeo 12...the idea was utter nonsense, and - like the Biden conspiracy theory today - depended on people not knowing what had really happened because they never checked the press from the time of the events.

Now, remember, this was about Benghazi. Let's stop for a second. If it...

@SecPompeo 13...was about a terrorist attack during the Obama Administration when - until he won reelection - the GOP spun as an Obama scandal, then shifted it to Clinton when she became the front-runner for 2016 (see a pattern here with the Biden conspiracy theories?)

So what would be...

@SecPompeo 14...the most-discussed thing in these hearings, based on committee press releases? The terrorists? The attack? The defense department response? Embassy security?

None of those. References to Hillary Clinton's emails appear more times than the name "Benghazi"....

@SecPompeo 15...but let's go to the thing that started this. GOPrs keeping testimony secret and then lying about what was said. The best example is Cheryl Mills. We now know what she said. And the GOP - blathering on Fox - lied and lied and lied because the testimony was secret....

@SecPompeo 16...now, this was very different than what is happening now. The witnesses begged for their testimony to be made public, but no.

Bottom line: When GOPrs whine now that potentially classified interviews arent public, tell them to contact Gowdy, Pompeo and all the hypocrites.

@SecPompeo 17...and if you want to see where all that information came from, it is from my piece, "Benghazi Biopsy" in Newsweek in 2015.

newsweek.com/benghazi-biops…