At the heart of what's left of the GOP "scandal" is a White House email which purports to show that the White House was concerned about getting dinged with a terrorist attack in the weeks before an election, so they wanted to change the message to make the American people think it wasn't that.

And they had an email which suggested that this was indeed the case.

Except… no.

It turns out that the "email" that the GOP had… wait for it… was doctored and/or selectively editted such that early reports about what it said are….. well, FALSE.  But when the ACTUAL email is read, it is clear the White House was merely interested in getting the facts right, and not in protecting its image.

Jake Tapper of CNN got a hold of the WHOLE email today and it contradicts what the GOP has been saying:

CNN has obtained an e-mail sent by a top aide to President Barack Obama about White House reaction to the deadly attack last September 11 on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that apparently differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.

The actual e-mail from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House was primarily concerned with the State Department’s desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department.

Tapper concludes that the person who leaked the false email clearly wanted to implicate the White House in a scandal that simply didn’t exist:

Whoever provided those quotes seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed….

So whoever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House – specifically Rhodes – was more interested in the State Department’s concerns, and more focused on the talking points, than the e-mail actually stated.

Oops.