Nearly a year after the Benghazi embassy attack that left four Americans dead including ambassador Chris Stevens, it seems that the deaths of US citizens have "made a difference" after all in the eyes of the amusingly named US Department of Justice, which moments ago filed criminal charges related to the Libyan attack. Alas, that's all we know because as the WSJ reports, the charges were filed under seal. It probably means that is all that shall be known until one day, several years from now long after Eric Holder has left the building, the DOJ will unseal the charges and disclose it never had a case to begin with.
From the WSJ [7]:
The Justice Department has filed sealed criminal charges against a number of suspects in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others, according to people familiar with the matter.
The exact nature of the charges wasn't clear, nor was the number of suspects named in the case. A Justice Department spokesman, Andrew Ames, said the investigation is ongoing.
"It has been and remains a top priority," he said, declining to comment further.
In May, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released images of three men who were at the compound and who were being sought for questioning. It's unclear if any of those facing criminal charges are the same as the ones in those FBI images.
The question of when to charge individuals in the Benghazi attack—and whether to make such charges public while the FBI engages in a worldwide hunt for suspects—has been the subject of internal debate among counterterrorism officials in the months since the attack, according to multiple people familiar with the case.
Some officials wanted charges filed earlier, and made public earlier, to reflect the progress investigators believe they have made in the case, those people said. Others argued for a more cautious approach, in part out of concern that revealing too much about the probe could hurt its chances of gathering more evidence and apprehending potential suspects.
The "others" beat out the "some" in the end.
As Reuters clarifies, or rather doesn't, the U.S. Justice Department said it had no comment on the reports by CNN and the Wall Street Journal, but that its investigation was ongoing and remained a top priority. It was not clear how many people had been charged and what the charges were.
With InTrade offline, we are willing to make markets that it will all, somehow, be Fabrice Tourre's fault once again.
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