All of the usual suspects are out in full force as the Benghazi witch hunt tries to gather steam. Hysterically touting emails that turned out to not say what Republicans claimed they said, Republicans have nonetheless managed to ignore reality. And when they are ignoring reality, they bring former Vice President Dick Cheney out from hiding. Dick Cheney is a wanted war criminal. He has failed to testify about WMD, 9/11, Iraq, the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, torture, US attorney firings, and much more.
The former Vice President met with House Republicans on Thursday morning in order to hiss his partisan poison into their willing ears. According to Fox News, Cheney appeared at a gathering where Boehner announced he was searching for a Benghazi email (that later turned out to not say what Boehner claimed it said), and raised the stakes by suggesting, “I think Hillary (Clinton) should be subpoenaed if necessary.”
Oh, yes, Dick. Great idea. Except, Dick Cheney has never believed that the executive branch is subject to congressional subpoenae, and Hillary Clinton’s job as Secretary of State falls under the purview of the executive branch. When Dick was the Defense Secretary and the Vice President, he dodged probes and regulations by claiming all kinds of crazy things, but he became best known for hiding under dubious “executive privilege” (by dubious, I mean at one time ruled unconstitutional by a judge W appointed).
Back in the good old days when the Press was asleep at the wheel, Dick Cheney argued that the Vice Presidency was not a part of the White House in order to exempt his office from any regulation of how he handled classified national security documents:
For the last four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has made the controversial claim that his office is not fully part of the Bush administration in order to exempt it from a presidential order regulating federal agencies’ handling of classified national security information, officials said Thursday.Oh, the secrets couldn’t be jeopardized! But now, there can be NO secrets.
Cheney has held that his office is not fully part of the executive branch of government despite the continued objections of the National Archives, which says his office’s failure to demonstrate that it has proper security safeguards in place could jeopardize the government’s top secrets.
Long before he made “executive privilege” the motto of the Dubya administration and before he was arguing that the Vice President is not subject to regulations impacting the executive branch, Cheney was dodging his own congressional subpoena. In 1991, then Defense Secretary Cheney refused to obey a congressional subpoena:
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