http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/272483-clinton-denies-lying-to-benghazi-victims-familiesMarch 09, 2016, 10:17 pm
Clinton denies lying to Benghazi victims' families
By Ben Kamisar
Hillary Clinton pushed back against accusations that she lied to the families of victims of the 2012 Benghazi terror attacks after being confronted by a video of a family member making that accusation.
“I feel a great deal of sympathy for the families of the four brave Americans we lost in Benghazi, and I certainly can't even imagine the grief she has for losing her son. But she’s wrong. She's absolutely wrong," Clinton said Wednesday during the Univision/CNN Democratic presidential debate in Miami.
"We were scrambling to get information that was changing literally by the hour. And when we had information, we made it public, but then sometimes we had to go back and say, 'We have new information that contradicts it.'"
The accusation has been a common line of attack on the GOP side, including a permanent fixture of Sen. Marco Rubio's (Fla.) stump speech.
Clinton argued that the many investigations all came to the conclusion that there were lessons to be learned, but that the administration did not purposefully mislead.
"This is not the first time we lost Americans in a terrorist attack. We lost 3,000 people on 9/11. We lost Americans serving in embassies in Tanzania and Kenya when my husband was president. We lost over 250 Americans, both military and civilians, when Ronald Reagan was president. And at no other time of those tragedies were they politicized," Clinton said to thunderous applause.
Clinton was also specifically asked about an email she sent to her daughter that said a terrorist group was responsible for the attack, despite public messaging pinning the attack in part on backlash to an anti-Muslim video.
"At the time I emailed with my daughter, a terrorist group had taken credit for our attacks on Benghazi. Within 16, 18 hours, they rescinded taking credit," she said.
"The video did play a role; we have captured one of the lead terrorists, and he admits that it was both a terrorist attack and it was influenced by the video. This was fog of war. This was complicated."
