Charlie Rangel explains how he trolled the Benghazi committee

Veteran Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., raised eyebrows on Thursday when he sat down on the dais in the room where the House Benghazi committee was hearing testimony from Hillary Clinton.

Rangel’s move was curious since he’s not a member of the committee. The Democrat, who is currently the second longest serving member of the House of Representatives, also sat on the Republican side of the dais.

In an interview with Yahoo News on Thursday, Rangel suggested he didn’t feel the need to take the committee seriously. He noted that the hearing was taking place in a room normally used by the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Rangel serves on Ways and Means and was the chairman until 2010, when he stepped down after being censured for ethics violations.

“I sat up there today, and there was some comment made by some members I understood as to why they had to sit on the floor and I was sitting on the dais so-called with the committee … I never gave it any thought. That’s my Ways and Means room. You know?” Rangel explained. “It just makes sense. I went in the door I normally go in, I went in the committee I go in, and I sat in a vacant chair about three seats away from the last member so I wouldn’t get confused with them.”

Many Democrats have described the Republican-led committee as a partisan effort to target Clinton, who is running for president. The committee was established to investigate the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton was secretary of state at the time of the attack.

Rangel described the committee as nakedly “political.”

“I never thought that a committee, Democrat or Republican, would be set up to do political work,” he said.

He argued the use of a committee for partisan purposes could undermine the “credibility of committees in the future.”

“If you lose confidence in the investigative committees in the House, it is sad really,” Rangel said.

Rangel sees the committee as just one way the current crop of Republicans is having a damaging effect. He cited the conservative effort that ousted GOP House Speaker John Boehner earlier this month and the budget battles that have continually created the threat of a government shutdown as other instances where Republicans are causing harm.

“If you take a look at the party, you find people that the more that they demonstrate that they are willing to take down the party, the Congress, the president, and their country, the more popular they are back home,” Rangel said, adding, “They’re competing as to who could be more radical.”

Rangel, who has said his current term will be his last after over four decades in the House, said he’s not happy about the current state of the GOP in Congress even though it’s been plagued by infighting.

“I’m angry because I can’t be happy about what the Republicans are doing because they’re not just doing it to themselves, they’re doing it to the institutions I love,” he explained.

Rep. Charlie Rangel in the early 1970s sitting on the House Judiciary Committee, which investigated President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. (Photo: Courtesy of Rep. Rangel)

Rangel framed his decision to sit with the Benghazi committee as a mixture of his feeling of ownership over the Ways and Means room and his disrespect for the hearing.

“I’ve been going to that room for 40 years, the same door, walking up the same three steps and finding an empty seat,” he said. “And then people are saying, ‘You sat on the Republican side’ … There’s no Republican side when I go to that room. I mean, when we’re having a hearing, of course, there’s Democrat and Republican, but you’re having a circus.”

Rangel also recalled the fact that Clinton had some early experience with congressional investigations. She was apparently his intern when he was on the House Judiciary Committee that investigated President Richard Nixon in 1974 following the Watergate scandal. According to Rangel, he realized their connection when he visited the White House shortly after Clinton’s husband, President Bill Clinton, was elected.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — 1974: Hillary Rodham, a lawyer for the Rodino committee and John Doar, left, chief counsel for the committee, bring impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon in the Judiciary Committee hearing room at the Capitol. (Photo: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

On this visit, Rangel was accompanied by former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, who supervised Clinton when she worked on the committee. Rangel said Nussbaum introduced him to the first lady by saying, “Hillary, your boss is here.”

“I thought he had lost his goddamn mind,” Rangel said. “I was so embarrassed for him trying to embarrass me.”

Rangel said Nussbaum and Clinton laughed and reminded him that she worked on the committee.

“Well, how the hell would I know that this little girl with the big glasses was the first lady,” Rangel said with a laugh.

However, Rangel said he couldn’t recall Clinton as a young woman even though “she had a lot of memories of me.”

“I’m on the committee. An intern’s an intern,” he explained.