Full interview in a little bit. But first we start with the news that has dominated the week, a story that republicans have reintroduced by design. On friday House Speaker john boehner picked seven republicans to sit on the new select committee that will spearhead a new roundinvestigations into the attack and aftermath of attack that killed four americans in benghazi, libya, september 11, 2012. None were elected before 2006 and they include a mix of establishment and tea party republicans. Boehners choice to chair the committee, trey gowdy of south carolina. It was day before boehner made his appointments to set up the Benghazi Special committee. Still up in the air is this question. Will the democrats take the five seats the republicans are offering them on the panel or will they boycott the whole thing altogether. It was on this show last weekend that House Democratic leader nancy pelosi first responded to the news that republicans planned to create the select committee. Pelosi told us that boehner hadnt even informed her of that decision, but now that the cat is out of the bag so to speak, shes dismissing the committee as a political maneuver to take the investigation out of the congress. Darrell issa holds up the government oversight and reform. The fact is this is a stunt. This is a political stunt. And the fact that i mean issa just is damaged goods. They had to move from him to another venue with another chairman. Thats what this is. Weve been there, done this over and over again. And so the question is there at least a level of decency in terms of respect . Theres been a lot of discussions about political motives that might be at play with republicans turning away from their single focus on the american care act. Could this select committee be just the start of a much bigger strategy by republicans . This week slates asked will republicans try to impeach president obama . Theres a chance this is already headed. Already the conservatives are clamoring for an impeachment. Weve impeach pt a president other sex with an intern. A coverup of a burglary. Why wouldnt we impeach this president for not protecting americans in the bloodbath known as benghazi. This talk isnt new on the right. Andrew mccarthy has a new book about to hit the shelves entitled faithless execution building a political case for obamas impeachment. Last fall steve stockman, an early supporter of the Benghazi Select Committee gave every member of congress a copy of the book. Stockman is not alone. In my mind, the president has committed Impeachable Offenses. Ive had lawyers come in, and these are lawyers, ph. D. S in history. They say, tell me how i can impeach the president of the United States. People need to know how serious this is. To me people may be starting to use the i word before too long. I word meaning impeachment, yeah. I dont have the back fwrounld to know if thats high creams and misdemeanors, but i think theyre getting perilously close. Weve got three years to get this guy out. Let me put it this way. I think he probably has been engaged in these unconstitutional approaches that may make his own ability to stay in office a question. These growing calls for impeachment from the right wing could gather steam. They may end up feeling the pressure to go along. More than a year ago just after the 2012 election, the prominent gop lobbyist named ed rogers offered this haunting premonition totime magazi time. He said, quote, were probably one email away from benghazi being an Impeachable Offense for much of our party. I think thats nuts, but thats where we are right now. It had 28 particulars that king george had committed against the rights of englishmen. Well, this particular report lists 76 examples of lawlessness and abuse of power. Over at the Washington Post, plumline blog, its noted the gop was backed into shutting down the government in defending the Affordable Care act last fall and the same thing could play out with impeachment. We ask is impeachment where were going . Is that the only place theyre tanging the investigation . If thats the road they are going to go down, how much political blowback could that create . By the way, what do they do . Do they refuse to go along or do they grudgingly take those five Committee Seats . Is it better to fight it from the inside to the outside. To talk about all this. I want to bring in msnbc and jerry. And congressman, aisle start with you. I have heard the case from both sides in the democratic part on this, hey, you want to know what theyre up to, you want to have a voice, you dont want to be blindsided, or the other case has been if you deny something bipartisanship, any sort of by partisan cooperation youre denying it legitimacy and youre making so the public turns against it. I come down very strongly that you have to participate. As march of a Kangaroo Court as it is, even in a Kangaroo Court its good to have a defense attorney and you cant seed the battlefield. Of course its nonsense and it has no real legitimacy. But trying to deny legitimacy by boycotting it is a story. The witnesses will have questions and theyll be asking over and over. Theyll be unfair questions, theyll badger the witness. Youve got to have somebody to say, wait a minute, let him answer the question or to point out how unfair or ridiculous the question is or to point out what is being done unfairly. You have to have, i believe, very strongly i argued this in the Democratic Caucus the other day. You cant seed the battleground to the bullies. By the way. The democrats met on this the other day. Mmhmm. How would you break down where your party in the house stand on this right now . Do you think ultimately what youre saying is where its going to go . Whats the sentiment . I think its mixed. Were not going to take a vote on this, so i dont know that. Shell make the decision. I think she was conflicted in herself. I mean we all recognize that this is a Kangaroo Court. This is nonsense. There have been eight investigations. Even chairman mckeown, the republican of the Armed ServicesCommittee Said this is nonsense. There are really only two allegations here. One is that somehow they let this happen. They didnt send in the armed forces. Secretary gates in his book who was very critical of president obama said this was nonsense and the chairman of the Armed Services committee whos republican said its nonsense, not true. The other allegation its what were the talking points for ambassador rice on meet the press a couple of days later, and the answer to that is probably somewhat confused and so what, and the president labeled it, you know, a terrorist attack the day after and they say no, we didnt. But does this all come down to whether the administration called it a terrorist attack right away or waited a week or two . So what. I mean what theyre trying to suggest or have been trying to suggest is that the Obama Administration and president obama was running for reelection. I kept us from having another terrorist attack. I dont know how you would ever cover up an al qaeda attack. No one said they tried to cover it up. By the way, under the Bush Administration, Something Like 16 american diplomats killed. You had an attack in calcutta by another al qaeda affiliate. Nobody tried to impeach him. Nobody said this was a coverup. No one you know, if we wanted if the democrats wanted to be political about this, we would mount a Major Campaign and say those four americans died because the Republican Congress refused to increase the budget even though the secretary asked for it. We didnt ask for that. This wasnt foreseeable. Rightly we talk about the tragedy of benghazi. At the same time when you look at the violence of american diplomatic outposts, its not that uncommon. Tim wrote this yesterday. He said the state department counts 86 significant attacks just in 2012. Thats the year of the benghazi attack. The death toll was not four. It was 24. This is not a new problem. Since 1970 theres been 521 attacks on diplomatic targets. Youre covering the politics of this in washington. How are the republicans looking at this . Are the republicans afraid if the democrats dont take the seats . My understanding from talking to, you know, republican aides and people close to the house leadership, theyre at least posture posturing as if they want the democrats to participate. Boehner is getting calls from the right and conservatives to do this for a long time and hes been very hesitant to do it. How he wants this to have an air of legitimacy. The house leadership wants to be able to hold this out as a legitimate investigation, as something they really put real resources into. That gets understood cut a little bit if the democrats dont come to the table because then the democrats can hold it out and say its a partisan hack job. If the democrats are at the table they at least get the optics of it. So, dave, also we had that quote, you know, after 2012, somebody from the republican establishment basically saying, hey, were one im away from this sort of far right and the party being able to call the shots on where we go on benghazi. We kind of got that email, the ben rhodes email. You wrote something that sort of put the ben rhodes email in context. Theres a question should the white house have released this a while ago and it didnt have to come the a judicial watch, freedom of information request. That being said you put this email in context and said this is really not any kind of smoking gun here. I think thats why youre hearing a few more democrats say its thinkable to join the committee because the advantage, i guess, for the people that are confused about it is there have been a bunch of panels asking sometimes the same question. You see trey gowdy, whos a very good prosecutor, who goes on tv and asks the questions that have been in the reports but people arent familiar with them. There was a ton of embassy attacks that were explicitly based in it. That has been left out of the narrative. Whenever you try to bring it up, it was lost. Its completely forgotten that this happened and if you dont have democrats on that committee bringing this up, its not going to be brought up. I think in general, overreach is what democrats would hope for just in the way that, i think, overreach helped the president clinton. Remember, democrats want ing th tape to be released. It made the republicans look overzealous. More cently Keith Ellison participating in peter kings muslim thing here. He kind of skploesed the flimsiness of it. Democrats are confident theres so much evidence here its being lost in the fog. If it comes out, it would correct a bit of a narrative. Do you think theyre going to join the committee ultimately . I remember talking to James Clapper on wednesday. Whenever i see that kind of movement, i assume well, i want to pick this up. Look. The republicans have the majority in the house right now. We know that. Theyll have the majority of the seats on this committee, no matter what. They eatll probably have the majority of the seat after this election. If they decide to do with this what they did with lewinsky in 1998 and take it to impeachment, they kchlt and i want to ask if there is and the wheels start turning, is there anything that will stop them. Well come back. Get lifelock protection and live life free. For 175 dollars a month . So our business can be on at ts network yup. All five of you for 175. Our clients need a lot of attention. Theres unlimited talk and text. Were working deals all day. You get 10 gigabytes of data to share. What about expansion potential . Add a line anytime for 15 bucks a month. Low dues. Great terms. Lets close. New at t mobile share value plans. Our best value plans ever for business. That, my friends, is everything. And with the quicksilver card from capital one, you earn unlimited 1. 5 cash back on everything you purchase. Not just everything at the hardware store. Not everything, until you hit your cash back limit. Quicksilver can earn you unlimited 1. 5 cash back on everything you could possibly imagine. Say it with me everything. One more time, everything and with that in mind. Whats in your wallet . And with that in mind. Mattress discounters Memorial Day Sale whats this . A queensize sealy gel memory Foam Mattress for just 497 . Mattress discounters has the Largest Selection of memory Foam Mattresses under one roof comforpedic. Icomfort. Optimum. And wow four years interestfree financing on the entire tempurpedic cloud collection dont miss the Memorial Day Sale. Mattress discounters so when we were setting up this segment, we showed you a clip of a number of members of congress and they were all granted from the far right side of the party. The thing i find interesting, one of the names we mention was steve stockman. Very conservative republican from texas. He lost a Senate Primary this year. He will not be in the house after this year but he is there now and was there last year and was the one who distributed this book to every member of Congress Calling for the impeachment of congress. When i see whats happening right now, republican leadershiping were no longer talking about the congress. Were talking about Steve Boehner doing what steve stockman, the guy whos been calling for an impeachment on the year, now hes creating this committee, that tells me the stockmans of the party. Certainly. I mean i think, again, this is something that the far right of the party wanted to happen. Theyve wanted it to happen for a long time here. Initially the house leadership was very reluctant to allow this to happen. They had it both through the senate and the house. This has been something looked at multiple times. Initially they said it wasnt there. There was something that came out when they handed it to the conservative watchdog group. It was the kind of thing that is a legitimate qualm for Congressional Republicans or anyone to say, yeah, this probably should have been in those subpoenas and at that point it renewed the furor on the right. It was a kind of thing that boehner kept his distance. This enabled the people on the right to say, come on, we need to do this. And so this certainly is not necessarily caving to the far right of the party. Where this goes is a whole other question. The big part of that is whether or not the democrats participate. I think thats going to really craft the narrative we get day in and day out out of this committee. If its just republicans grilling officials in the Obama Administration or if we have this type of dynamic we had with darrell issa, this back and forth where every day theyre battling for headlines. Thats a very different dynamic than if its just republicans slamming them. Thats why we must have the democrats there. Mine if they have a onesided presentation, they could whip themselves up into an impeachment furor. Maybe the democrats want that. It would kill them in the elections, but it wouldnt be good for the country. Its going to be unfair. Its going to be a kangaroo core. Theyve given the chairman the ability to handle to issue subpoenas without even a vote of the committee. Chairman issa has and they wont deny themselves the power to investigate to depose witnesses without a democrat prese present, which is highly unusual and wrong. Theyre going to be in the room pointing it out. I dont think theyre going to get anywhere what they need even to convince themselves if they were to do a phony impeachment hearing. I want to read something. You made reference to this a few moments ago. This is buck mckeown. This is what he said. Darrell issa was this is what he said after the latest round of issa hearings. The Armed Services committee has interviewed more than a dozen witnesses in the operational chain of command that night, yielding thousands of pages of transcripts. Emails, and other documents. We have no evidence that department of state officials delayed the decision to deploy what few sources dod had available to respond. This is the leading republican saying this. But, again, dave, now here we are about a week after he say this looking at a select committee. Can you play this out a little bit . Lets sea democrats do join the committee . Lets say they have the back and forth they have with eli cummings and darrell issa. That plays out itself. I just remember the lewinsky thing. It took what did they end up with . Did they have any democratic votes for that . They might have had one or two. No. The question youre talking about, the buck mckeon argument, i remember talking to Republican Voters about benghazi. They would bring it up without me mentioning i. They would show up outside obama buses that went by with benghazi signs. What made them angry and has kept them angry is the fury that they were told not to help any of the people in the compound, any of the people responding that night. And, again, because the reporting has been so confusing its not widely known. I think you can go on conservative radio and media and youll hear they were told to stand down. This was in together of 2012. To the extent that thats vetted again in public on tv with lots of people watching it, that might remove some of the fury. And gowdy, who i respect on all sides here as a prosecutor, thats what animates him, the idea that families were lied to and that their family members who were dead were not given the help they needed. If that is that storys fully told that everything was done to help them, that changes that. Whats missing is a key piece of information. Yeah. I think weve we basically know now its misinformation. He and a lot of republicans say we havent been told the truth because its been so scattershocked. They dont want to believe it. Its underable. You have grieving families, sons who were navy s. E. A. L. S. Steve ki