Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) challenged Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) to provide unanimous consent to pass his resolution calling for a Joint Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks. Cruz currently has twenty-five Senate co-sponsors for his bill. Menendez blocked Cruz’s bill calling it a “political trick” and a “purely political witch-hunt without merit.”
Menendez admitted he did not know the answers to a lot of the questions Cruz was asking. He said he didn’t know if the President was awake or asleep during the attack and that he doesn’t know what, if anything, the President could have done. “I think the question is, did he even get told by those who had information such an attack was going on?” Menendez said. “I don’t know. The bottom line is, would that have saved anybody? I don’t know either.”
Cruz responded that this is exactly why we need to have an investigation. “The Democratic Senator from New Jersey, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, just told this body that he has no idea if President Obama was even told four Americans were under terrorist attack, he doesn’t know what, if anything, the President could have done to save them,” Sen. Cruz added. “I suggest that’s exactly the reason we need this committee. If the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee two years later cannot answer that question, it makes it abundantly clear that the response of the administration, and sadly the response of Senate Democrats, has been partisan stonewalling rather than trying to get to the truth.”
Cruz finished his remarks stating, “The American people care a great deal what the President knew about national security, if he wasn’t engaged, if he didn’t know, if he didn’t work to stop it. That is an inquiry worthy of this body.”
Cruz originally introduced this legislation on September 12, 2013.
The following video captures the Senate floor debate between the two senators.
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