Benghazi: The Jailing of YouTube Video Maker Should Be Investigated

My post last week about Benghazi is looking downright prophetic already, and not in a Lefty “social justice” sort of way.  Over the weekend came word that whistleblowers will give damning testimony, including that on the night of the Benghazi attack Hillary cut the State Department’s counter-terrorism unit out of the loop for some reason.

And even some in the noos media are paying attention now.

But I want to focus on something I read this morning that is a blinding flash of the obvious, but which even I have overlooked.  Now that it is that much more clear that the Obama regime knew very well that the attack was planned and prepared by terrorists and had nothing to do with a dumb YouTube video, the full outrage of the jailing of the maker of said video is that much more evident.

Corrupted law agencies allowing themselves to become brownshirts jailed the man as a scapegoat.  To what extent did the Obama regime direct and/or encourage this?  This is the sort of thing regimes do (and is among the reasons I address the Obama regime as just that).

And, as Glenn Reynolds points out, it cries out for investigation:

But here are some further lines of investigation. Some Obama-defenders will note that Nakoula was jailed for probation violations, of which he may have even been guilty. But, as I note in my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece — to be published next month, in substantially revised and updated form, by the Columbia Law Review — prosecutors can always find a reason to put someone away if they really want to. The question is, why, exactly, were they so eager to put Nakoula away?

The fast-tracking of Nakoula’s jailing was highly irregular. Among other things, I’d like to see the Congressional investigators get Nakoula’s prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Dugdale — and perhaps his boss, U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. — under oath about communications from the White House or the Justice Department regarding this case.

Because what it’s looking like is that Nakoula was targeted and jailed so as to provide a scapegoat/villain in a politically motivated cover story that the White House knew was false. If that’s the case, it’s extremely serious indeed, and in some ways more significant than whatever lapses and screwups took place in Benghazi. I’d also be interested in hearing from Nakoula’s attorney, Steven Seiden, about any threats made by the government to secure a plea deal.

If there’s an impeachable offense anywhere in the Benghazi affair — and at this point, I’m not saying there is — it’s more likely in what happened with Nakoula than in the problems abroad, which by all appearances are simple incompetence, rather than something culpable. Railroading someone in to jail to support a political story, on the other hand, is an abuse of power and a breach of trust.

And, to his credit, Reynolds was on this early.

It’s past time Congress or a Special Prosecutor get on this.