madam secretary, you are telling me you had no authority to take anyone s paycheck, to cause anyone to be fired? you were telling me you were legally prohibited from doing that, is that your position here this morning. it is my position in the absence of finding dereliction or breach of duty, there could not be immediate action taken but there was a process that was immediately instituted and which led to decisions being made. yes, ma am. the decision was put these back at fullback pay and keep them on as employees. that was the decision that was made as a result of the processes that you put in place. i will tell you folks in kansas don t think that is accountability. i want to do some math with you. could i get the first chart, please? you know how many security requests there were in the first quarter of 2012? for everyone or for benghazi? i m sorry, yes, ma am, related to benghazi and libya, do you know how many there were? no, i do not know. ma am there were over 100
i followed the law, congressman, that was my responsibility. you re telling me you had no authority to take anyone s paycheck, to cause anyone to be fired? you re telling me you were legally prohibited from doing that? is that your position? it is my position in the absence of finding dereliction or breach of duty, there could not be immediate action taken, but there was a process that was immediately instituted and which led to decisions being made. yes, ma am. the decision was to put these back at full back pay and keep them on as employees. that was the decision made as a result of the process you put in place. the folks in kansas don t think that is accountable. i want to do something math with you. can i get the first chart please? do you know how many security rekwechts there were in the first quarter of 2012? for everyone or for benghazi? i m sorry, yes, ma am, related to benghazi and libya, do you know how many? no, i do not know. ma am, there were just over 100
questions about who knows what s going on, well, podiska was on the inside. he then affirmed what we already knew. period. elijah cummings, thank you, congressman. thanks very much for being with us. of course, we have asked for the other side to come on as well. we will keep doing that. joining me live on capitol hill, nbc s luke russert. here in the studio, new york times white house correspondent mark ladler and msnbc political reporter, alex seitzwald. luke, first to you. it begs the question, what are they asking huma abedin about? her e-mails? it s hard to imagine because she doesn t have any connection we know of to benghazi. it s a very good question. i was somewhat taken back what chairman cummings said, that the questioning was fair but he didn t know why the questioning was happening. that sort of leaves this gray area to what exactly is happening in the doors behind me in that room. what we do know from what the committee said ahead of time, this is the republican m
think they made a huge mistake not separating the investigations into the benghazi events and the e-mails. if you were betting on the pure politics of this, you d say the republicans better be more prepared for this. the republicans said there were ulterior motives and representative hanna said there were political motivations to target hillary clinton. are the xeels cowheels coming o benghazi investigation bus? if you look at the history of the united states and the high-profile hearings, watergate, et cetera, there s always dual motives. there s a desire on the part of the republicans to damage the democrats likely nominee. the way to handle that is to segment out, let the politics take care of themselves and do a
bit of everything for everybody. what we haven t talked about yet is the tea party, which he did bring up, and he also brought up the ideas related to benghazi, jamal shaw, which i mentioned earlier he had brought in. if other candidates are watching, it is a nimbleness that he has and displays when he is on tv, when he is on air. yeah, and his ability to connect with that sort of conservative i had for a lot of voters is one of the things that makes it so different for the republicans to respond. there is a lot of republicans who are extremely pro-immigration, who want to increase their outreach. we ve had some of them talking, but there are also a lot of republican candidates here who will see donald trump getting this attention and think, hey, he s taking my voters.