Ayotte: Benghazi Brush-off

GOP Senator dodges blocking nominees over Benghazi, says “we’ve been brushed off many times”.

Senator Kelly Ayotte today did not say specifically whether she will block every presidential nominee Obama puts forward until every survivor of the attack last year in Benghazi testifies on Capitol Hill.

Senator Kelly Ayotte said today that fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is pushing the idea of blocking nominees, will engage in talks with the Obama administration to “get to the bottom” of the September 11th attack last year that left a US ambassador and three other Americans dead.

“We keep being brushed off and we need answers,” said Ayotte.

“It’s not acceptable that they’ve not been made available,” she said, speaking today on State of the Union. Ayotte has previously joined Graham and Senator John McCain in clashing with the White House over accounts of the attack on the US diplomatic facility.

The Benghazi attack is an ongoing terrorism investigation, but Ayotte says that fact does not preclude the case from oversight by Congress.

But she declined to say whether she will block nominees: “I don't have a hold on any witnesses right now,” she said.