The senior White House official who recently became a lightning rod for critics of President Obama’s foreign policy after he made brusque comments in a recent magazine profile has declined an invitation to testify before Congress.
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was invited to address a Tuesday hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on “White House narratives” surrounding last year’s nuclear deal with Iran, joining a panel of foreign policy experts.
The subject gained new currency this month after the New York Times Magazine, in a lengthy profile of Rhodes, quoted him saying that the White House “created an echo chamber” to advocate for the deal, by enlisting likeminded policy groups and journalists to say “things that validated what we had given them to say.” He also made uncomplimentary remarks about journalists and the Washington foreign-policy establishment, calling the former callow and the latter infested with groupthink.
Rhodes responded to the controversy last week, writing that the White House effort to sell the Iran deal “wasn’t ‘spin,’ it’s what we believed and continue to believe, and the hallmark of the entire campaign was to push out facts.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Oversight Committee chairman, invited Rhodes to last week to make that case to his panel, where he undoubtedly would have faced hostile questioning from Republicans. White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston responded Monday to decline Chaffetz’s invitation on Rhodes’s behalf, citing “significant constitutional concerns rooted in the separation of powers.”
“Specifically, the appearance of a senior presidential adviser before Congress threatens the independence and autonomy of the President, as well as his ability to receive candid advice and counsel in the discharge of his constitutional duties,” Eggleston wrote.
Chaffetz on Monday tweeted his response: “Talks to reporters and his ‘echo chamber’ but not Congress. Disappointing, but typical.”
