In New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton throws Benghazi families under the bus

by Jazz Shaw     •     Hot Air

The GOP primary has probably been the best thing to happen to Hillary Clinton in years. There was a period of time during the spring and early summer of last year when it seemed as if nobody could talk about anything except Hillary’s emails and the various investigations into the horrible events at Benghazi. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting some story about the former Secretary of State being corrupt, deceptive or just plain lying. (Ah… good times, my friends.) But then the Republican race heated up, our candidates began flinging monkey poo at each other, several parts of the western world caught fire and most of the discussions of Hillary seemed to fade into the past.

Not entirely, however. Our friend Jeff Dunetz has a great story over at his place to kick off the year and it deals with a recent Q&A that Clinton did with the editorial board of the Conway Daily Sun. In it, the editors asked her some rather pointed questions about the initial response to the Benghazi attacks and why she told one group of people one story while singing another tune entirely for others.

Hillary Clinton was confronted with her conflicting stories about the reasons for the attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya, and answered by throwing the victims’ families under the bus. She suggested they lied, because she never told them about the attack being caused by an offensive video. Perhaps they got caught up in “the fog of war.”

Sun Columnist Tom McLaughlin asked the video vs. planned terrorist attack question. He reminded Clinton that she “told an Egyptian diplomat the Benghazi attack was planned and not a protest but that she told family members of the deceased that the attack was the result of a demonstration. He said she then told George Stephanopoulos that she didn’t tell the families the attack was a demonstration about a film.”

“Somebody is lying,” said McLaughlin.”Who is it?

Clinton replied, “Not me, that’s all I can tell you.”

At the time, Clinton said, everyone was emotionally distraught. She said some families didn’t know their sons were working for the CIA or were in Benghazi. Clinton said the information she had about the attack was from the intelligence community.

Sure, somebody was lying, but it’s not me! The interview may not have produced much in terms of clarity, but if nothing else they managed to get Clinton onboard with the obvious conclusion that there were plenty of lies being flung about at the time. As Jeff goes on to remind us, on the very night of the attacks, Clinton is on record as having told the Libyan president that a terrorist group was taking credit for them. That same night she told her daughter that an AQ related group was responsible. Neither of the communications made any reference to a video, and in fact she told the Egyptian Prime Minister the next day that the video was unrelated.

Yet during that same 18 hour period she made multiple statements blaming the video and “inflammatory material on the internet” for the attacks. That’s not to mention all of the White House spokespersons who were trotted out on every cable news show in the world repeating that claim. The families of several of those lost at Benghazi have come forward and said that Clinton spoke with them personally and blamed it all on the video. So who is the one who is lying?

“Not me, that’s all I can tell you.”

The real question is whether or not any of this will finally bubble back up to the surface. World events and the brouhaha in the GOP primary have done an admirable job of sinking most of Clinton’s dishonesty and trustworthy ratings woes well below the surface. One newspaper in New Hampshire is doing the leg work of getting the story out there but it seems unlikely that the news will spread much further.