Benghazi Hearings Could Impeach Obama, Prosecute Hillary Clinton?

The Benghazi hearings are currently ongoing, but already some are wondering whether the testimony could impeach Obama and prosecute Hillary Clinton for their actions, or lack thereof.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Mike Huckabee believes the Benghazi hearings could impeach Obama, or at least get Obama removed from office. Huckabee believes the justification for impeaching Obama would be based upon the Benghazi cover-up:

“I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term. I know that puts me on a limb, but this is not minor. When a president lies to the American people and is part of a cover-up, he cannot continue to govern. And as the facts come out, I think we’re going to see something startling. And before it’s over, I don’t think this president will finish his term unless somehow they can delay it in Congress past the next three and a half years.”

Greg Gutfeld recently summarized the Benghazi hearings in this fashion:

“The thing is Benghazi isn’t complex; it’s very simple. People needed help on 9/11. They were denied. Four people died. The government falsely blamed a video. You can’t get any easier than that. That’s Scandal 101. Even Howie Kurtz could follow it, and he is an idiot. Especially compared with other massive scandals — Watergate: people lied, no one died, Benghazi: the president shilled after people were killed.”

Update: Included more information from Benghazi hearings, which were on-going during the writing of this article.

Whether Hillary Clinton is involved in the Benghazi cover-up is currently being contested at the Benghazi hearings. But some unnamed sources claim another reason to impeach President Obama is because only he could have prevented special forces from being put on the ground:

“I have a hard time thinking it was Hillary alone. Hillary may have tried to circumvent the counterterrorism board and deal with this. I think in order for her to tell General Ham, ‘No, you’re not going to get involved,’ she would have had to talk to the president. The president would have had to say, ‘No, take your commands from Hillary.’ He would have had said something, because Ham does not work for the Department of State; he works directly for the president.”

Many of the statements made by Ambassador Susan Rice attempted to politicize the Benghazi attacks to make them appear favorable to President Obama. The Rice narrative included Al-Qaeda losing ground, which the State Department knew to be untrue, and that the Middle East’s public sentiment toward the United States was improving. The Benghazi attack was specifically stated by to not be connected to any U.S. foreign policy decisions by the Obama White House.

Under military law, specifically the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), reasons for impeachments are treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors. Congress can define what “high crimes or misdemeanors” means so it’s possible the altering of the Benghazi talking points and the following cover-up might qualify.

By definition, an impeachment is a formal process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as criminal or civil punishment. A commander-in-chief can be indited for watching troops die, while having the capability do prevent those actions, but then purposefully taking no action. But Congress has to be the one to call for impeachment. That can be done if in fact Obama watched the troops die and did nothing about it due to political reasons.

Outside of the Benghazi cover-up that occurred after the attack, based upon what we do know I will summarize quickly how it could be construed that the personnel in Benghazi were purposefully put in danger by the State Department and the Obama administration:

Security budgets were cut through “normalizing.” Multiple requests for maintaining internal security levels were denied despite the Red Cross and the British being attacked. Charlene Lamb never responded to the Tripoli embassy’s request for continued security resources. Internal security was thus reduced from 34 people to just three. Instead, groups tied to al Qaeda terrorists were hired to guard Benghazi and these groups abruptly ended this contract right before the attack. During the attack, special forces were denied a Benghazi rescue missiontwice even though the flight time was less than an hour.

During the Benghazi hearings, Mr. Hicks and Nordstrom testified that the United States government never requested permission from the Libyan government to fly our military airplanes over the country with the exception of an unmanned drone that was approved prior to the attack. Mr. Thompson stated his opinion that the United States should showcase the resolve to rescue any US personnel under attack both currently and for the future. Because of this testimony, it could be said that we never seriously attempted a rescue mission at the very least.

The damage from Benghazi extends beyond the deaths at Benghazi. At one point, Hillary Clinton famously declared “what different does it make?” Asked about this, Mr. Hicks said the Libyan government was insulted, the president was angry, and our credibility around the world was hurt. The FBI also was unable to get to the crime scene for 17 days. The Benghazi suspects, whose photos were recently released, are thought to be connected to al Qaeda, but so far the leads have not produced any results.

But will the Benghazi hearings even provide the evidence necessary to finger Hillary Clinton, never mind impeach Obama? So far, based upon the available evidence, President Obama himself has not been directly implicated in making any of these decisions, although many critics would like to speculate since these actions all directly benefited Obama during the 2012 Presidential Elections.

But connecting the dots to President Obama is proving not be easy for his critics. As far as this writer can determine, there are no classified documents released that connect Obama to any major fateful decision. The emails detailing how the Benghazi talking points were altered show how “White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” We know the final version of the Benghazi talking points were produced at the White House, as well as the YouTube story, but President Obama is never named directly in all of these instances. At one time, President Obama did say he would take the blame for anything said by Susan Rice, but this was done in a general sense.

Even Hillary Clinton has mostly managed to evade a direct connection to the decision to reduce security in Benghazi. Representative Issa trumpeted a Benghazi security cable document bearing Hillary Clinton’s signature, but quite frankly it cannot be proven that Hillary Clinton read or even knew about the cables, which are actually emails. Never mind, based upon standard State Department protocols literally all of the communications during that timeframe bare Hillary Clinton’s signature as Secretary of State.

Still, we do know Hillary Clinton was at least involved during the Benghazi attacks because her staff was nice enough to make this admission to a CNN reporter:

“As you know, she’s not that interested in focusing on herself. But obviously, she was here very late that night. She was getting regular updates from both the DS Command Center and the senior NEA leadership in the building, she was making phone calls to senior people, and so she was obviously very much involved.”

During the Benghazi hearings, Eric Nordstrom, the security chief in Libya, averred that Hillary Clinton “absolutely” would have been briefed on his and Stevens’ repeated requests for an increased security presence in Libya. But, as far as I’m aware, there is no paper trail proving Hillary Clinton a liar.

So, really, despite the Benghazi hearings so far we only have mid-level government officials making claims of higher ups putting pressure on them, but with no names named. Back in the fall, Mr. Nordstrom claimed Charlene Lamb told him Benghazi security couldn’t be maintained “because there would be too much political cost.” What we don’t know yet is who in the Obama administration gave Charlene Lamb this idea.

Unless a major bombshell is released by the Benghazi hearings an Obama impeachment seems very unlikely. The House of Representatives have sole power of impeachment, but the Senate has the sole power to try impeachments. This is Article 1 of the United States Constitution. The majority of the House of Representatives is Republican, while the majority of the Senate is Democratic. Even in the event of a bombshell, Democrats may pull the same stunt they pulled with President Clinton, who was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice but the Senate rejected the articles sent from the House.

Do you think the Benghazi hearings could lead to an Obama impeachment?