To hear the right tell it, Special Operations forces, the FBI, and the White House all worked together to promote Hillary Clinton.
Right-wing political voices took to the airwaves and Internet on Tuesday to speculate about the timing of the arrest, following the news that one of the suspected ringleaders of the Benghazi terrorist attack had been arrested. Former Secretary of State Clinton has been hit hard for her role in the Benghazi attacks for years; she responded to critics in her new book, Hard Choices, which she’s currently promoting with a heavy media blitz. She’s scheduled to have two interviews tonight with Fox and CNN.
“You have a former secretary of state who is in the middle of a high profile book tour, I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points to some of the things she has been discussing,” Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, the host of Fox News’ Independents, suggested.
“What a great thing to announce tonight at Fox News that the perpetrators have been brought to justice,” Concerned Vets CEO and Fox contributor Pete Hegseth responded. “It’s all too neat and it’s too cute. I always want to give the benefit of the doubt to our authorities, but in this case it feels too neat on the timeline.”
Former congressman turned TV host Joe Walsh took to Twitter to question the same thing.
Glad we nabbed a #Benghazi suspect, but the timing is questionable. Did they let him wander, waiting for the perfect political opportunity?
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) June 17, 2014One of Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s aides also seem to suggest that there was something peculiar about the timing of the arrest as well, though when asked by The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein if he was inferring more, he simply said the report was “remarkable” and he was simply “pointing people to HuffPo’s excellent reporting.”
While it's great to see they caught the Benghazi suspect, it's important to remember, he wasn't really hiding: http://t.co/78n3IP2aOA
— Rory Cooper (@rorycooper) June 17, 2014Many alleged that the capture was a political maneuver more than a matter of national security.
Former Florida Congressman Allen West wrote a full blog post alleging political motives.
“Hat tip to our U.S. Special Operators but this smells of typical politics and especially the politics of expediency and Orwellian message control,” he wrote.
Others skipped the conspiracy theories, but criticized the president for political motives behind how he was handling the prisoner.
Republican senators criticized the president for the way he is treating the prisoner, who is expected to be arraigned in criminal court in Washington, D.C. next week. Three leading Republicans, Arizona’s Sen. John McCain, South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio pushed for his detention at Guantanamo Bay.
“In order to locate all individuals associated with the attacks that led to the deaths of four Americans, we need intelligence,” Rubio said, according to The Washington Times. “That intelligence is often obtained through an interrogation process.”
Rubio went on to criticize the president for being “more interested in the politics of the war on terrorism than the execution of it.”
Additional reporting by Kelly Weill and Luke Leifeste.
Jane Timm