It is difficult not to feel sorry for a mildly-addled and useless time-server like Elijah Cummings. He was named “stuckee” by the Democrat caucus and serves as the senior Democrat on the special committee Trey Gowdy chairs investigating Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s malfeasance and misfeasance in the Benghazi tragedy. Given the facts in the case this would be a thankless task in the best of times. These are not the best of times. The prime mover in the the Benghazi tragedy is a vicious and spiteful harpy who will be seeking her party’s nomination to be president of the United States. The witnesses are numerous. The best case scenario finds the administration let Americans be killed through stupidity. The worst case is that the administration caused them to be killed.

Now Cummings is falling back on that tried and true tactic, divert attention from the facts by attacking the chairman.

Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi are accusing Republicans of conducting crucial interviews in secret and withholding information.

The tensions between the two parties erupted into the open on Monday after a letter from the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), criticizing Chairman Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) handling of the investigation went public.

 Cummings said Republicans were holding meetings with witnesses, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Maghreb Affairs Raymond Maxwell, who claims he was instructed to edit documents relating to the 2012 attacks. He said that Democrats were being excluded from these Republican-only meetings. Democrats say they have never asked Gowdy to require witnesses to meet with them, just that when witnesses are willing to sit down with both sides, they be included.

“You have had different standards for Republicans and Democrats participating in the investigation, secret meetings with witnesses, and – perhaps most importantly – withheld or downplayed information when it undermines the allegations we are investigating,” Cummings wrote in a four-page letter sent to Gowdy on Friday.

You have to give Gowdy credit here. He had bent over backwards to accommodate Cummings and the cover-up artists now running interference for the administration and Hillary. And Gowdy is smart enough to anticipate his bipartisan gestures were going to be met with a flurry of dishonest hand-waving by the Democrats.

“Chairman Gowdy will talk to Benghazi sources with or without the Democrats present just as they are welcome to talk to sources with or without Republicans present,” said committee communications director Jamal D. Ware in a statement Monday. “[N]o congressional select committee has ever had a requirement that sources meet with both sides at the same time, and the Benghazi Committee is no exception.

“Further, that the Democrats have released correspondence that attempts to politically characterize sources’ private discussions with the committee without proper context goes to the exact heart of why the Chairman will not require sources to talk to both sides,'” he added.

As we get into the 2016 primary season we can anticipate yet more efforts to paint Gowdy as some sort of a partisan rottweiler and the committee’s work as a political hit job.