GOP to Open Assault on White House Over IRS and Benghazi

WASHINGTON - House Republicans on Wednesday will take the first in a series of steps intended to spotlight what they are convinced is a pattern of cover-up and political whitewashing by the White House, but what Democrats contend is an election-year stunt.

The House will vote late on Wednesday to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, a former Internal Revenue Service official who is at the center of multiple investigations into possible acts of political retribution.

Then, on Thursday, the House is expected to formally approve a resolution to establish a select committee to investigate the 2012 attack on American facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

Through multiple congressional investigations in both chambers, Republicans have sought to link President Obama and his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to a politically motivated effort to obscure what really happened in Benghazi when the American ambassador to Libya and three others were killed.

At the same time, parallel investigations on Capitol Hill have tried to show that the president and his aides used the I.R.S. to persecute Tea Party groups in the hopes of muting their political effectiveness during the 2012 elections.

Both series of investigations point at a sinister motive by the White House: to cover up as much as possible so that Mr. Obama would not lose his re-election bid.

Republicans, sensitive to the accusation that they are politicizing a tragedy that cost four Americans lives and misusing their oversight authority, seemed cognizant of the delicate line they were walking. House leaders insisted on Wednesday that they were interested in exposing the truth of a huge administration-led cover-up, not in scoring political points.

'This is not going to be a sideshow,' Mr. Boehner said. 'This is not going to be a circus.'

Then, his voice rising in anger and his face darkening to red, he went through the list of investigations that conservatives have pursued to frustratingly inconclusive ends over the last several years.

'When is the administration going to tell the American people the truth? They've not told the truth about Benghazi, they've not told the truth about the I.R.S., they've not told the truth about Fast and Furious,' he said, referring to a botched gun investigation. 'One would have to guess if they're not willing to tell the American people the truth, it must not be very pretty.'

Yet Republicans found themselves on the defensive about why in recent days they have tried to raise money off the Benghazi episode. The National Republican Congressional Committee has solicited money through a petition called Benghazi Watchdog on its website, which says, 'Let's go after Obama and Hilary Clinton,' misspelling her first name.

Democrats were openly derisive of Republicans, branding their legislative agenda 'conspiracy week.' And they tried to make an issue of the partisan imbalance on the Benghazi select committee, which will consist of more Republicans than Democrats.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, and the Democratic whip, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, wrote to Mr. Boehner urging him to make the committee nonpartisan.

'This approach is not only unfair, but it is unwise,' they wrote. 'Republican members have made numerous accusations in public over the past year that have turned out to be untrue after further investigation, undermining the credibility of the investigation and the House.'

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