'Transparent attempt': Reporter shows how Biden impeachment is the next Benghazi

The impeachment inquiry into president Joe Biden is less like the Donald Trump impeachments and more like today's version of the Benghazi hearings, according to an Atlantic writer.

Kevin McCarthy recently announced an impeachment inquiry into Biden, which was cheered by right-wingers who sought to score political points or churn up more evidence. Some on the Republican side have cautioned away from jumping into the impeachment, seeking to prevent going into a political process without evidence of any presidential wrongdoing.

Atlantic staff writer David A. Graham pointed out how similar this process is to the Benghazi scandal that helped to tank Hillary Clinton's poll numbers.

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Graham writes that "the more useful comparison is to the House investigation into Benghazi from 2014 to 2016."

"Both inquiries are based far more on vibes and political machinations than they are on hard evidence. Kevin McCarthy’s longstanding ambition to be speaker of the House sit at the center of both," he then added. "And the fate of the Benghazi investigation offers some indications about how this one could turn out."

Graham continued:

"Like the current impeachment inquiry, the Benghazi story began with U.S. involvement in a foreign country—in this case, Libya, where the Obama administration was reluctantly drawn into the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi. On September 11, 2012, Islamist attacks on two U.S. facilities in the city of Benghazi killed the U.S. ambassador, a Foreign Service officer, and two CIA contractors. Republicans blamed Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, for failing to prevent or respond quickly to the attack. Then-Speaker John Boehner initially resisted calls for a special committee to investigate the attack but eventually agreed."

There is a further lesson about the motives of both events, according to Graham:

"The point of the Benghazi committee was to hurt Clinton’s chances at winning the presidency in 2016. We know this because Republicans were not subtle. As McCarthy, then the House majority leader, said in a September 2015 TV interview: 'Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.'"

Read the full piece here.