Maher to GOP: Prove you're sane by dropping Benghazi conspiracies

Comedian Bill Maher said Friday night that conservatives could prove their sanity by convincing the Republican Party to stop treating the attacks on a U.S. consulate in Libya as a conspiracy.

"The one way I really think [moderate Republicans could have a voice] is to get off this Benghazi thing," he said on Real Time. "To me, this would be the clearest signal from sane conservatives that they have turned this corner, because I still do not know what the scandal is, I do not know what the point of it is, I do not know what Obama's fiendish plot was."

Republicans have alleged that President Barack Obama and UN ambassador Susan Rice lied when they initially claimed the attack in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, was the result of a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam film. The Obama administration later acknowledged that the attack was conducted by militants linked to al-Qaeda and that their initial statements were incorrect.

During the Real Time segment, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore told conservative CNN contributors David Frum and Ana Navarro that they seemed more angry at the President of the United States than the militants who carried out the attack.

But Frum insisted the Obama administration was trying to avoid blame for the attack.

"Where the Fox part of the story comes in is that may not be a big enough of a scandal, and so some people are running with the scandal and making it bigger," he added.

"Let's talk about the other Rice, Condoleezza Rice," Maher said, shifting the conversation. "She's the National Security adviser when 3,000 Americans are killed on American soil by al Qaeda while she is still locked in her office talking about Russia being the biggest threat. She gets to be the Secretary of State after that. Susan Rice just goes out there and says exactly what the CIA told her they knew at the time, but somehow she is the most evil person ever."

At a congressional hearings on Friday, former CIA director David Petraeus said the intelligence agency had known of al-Qaeda ties to Benghazi soon after the attack. However, the CIA provided Susan Rice with a memo that omitted that classified information.