Politics

Benghazi Victim’s Mother: Investigation ‘Is About Hillary’ [VIDEO]

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton has criticized Republicans leading the House Select Committee on Benghazi for conducting a politically-motivated witch-hunt that exploits the deaths of the four Americans murdered during the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Bengahzi. But the mother of one of those killed in the terrorist attack told CNN on Sunday that Clinton should indeed be the focus of the committee’s investigation and that she should have turned over her emails a long time ago.

“First of all, it is about Hillary,” Patricia Smith, the mother of U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, told CNN’s Martin Savidge.

“This is her department. It was her area, her bailiwick, and she did all the instruction on what should be done there. Why shouldn’t they talk to Hillary about it?” Smith continued.

Smith was responding to questions from Savidge about recent reports that a former staffer on the Republican side of the Benghazi Committee plans to file a lawsuit alleging that he was fired after complaining that the investigation focused too much on Clinton and her use of a private email system.

The investigator, Bradley Podliska, also alleged that he was fired in June after informing his superiors that he would have to take leave for 39 days to fulfill his duty as an Air Force reservist in Germany.

The Clinton campaign seized on Podliska’s allegations, saying that it proves that the committee’s investigation is aimed at hurting the Democratic frontrunner’s presidential campaign. (RELATED: Trey Gowdy Responds To Fired Benghazi Staffer’s Claim That Investigation Was ‘Partisan’)

Clinton herself has slammed the committee, and its chairman, South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy.

“I would have never have done that,” she said last week about forming a Benghazi Committee. “Look at the situation they chose to exploit to go after me for political reasons. The deaths of four Americans.”

But Patricia Smith’s comments undermine Clinton’s argument. She said questions about Clinton’s email system loom large “because Hillary’s not answering anything.”

“If she would have opened up her email thing so we can find out what she said at that time — I understand she was talking to Obama while this was going on,” Smith said. “I want to know was she talking to Obama. I want to hear from her lips what she said.”

Smith also said that she believes Clinton “is not a wonderful person.”

She said that Clinton has made promises to get to the bottom of the Benghazi raid but has not followed through and that she instructed the State Department to not share information with her.

“All she ever did was tell me I was not a member of the immediate family,” Smith said, adding that “I don’t think that’s very nice to be talking about a mother that way.”

“So far they have treated me like dirt and have not told me anything,” she said.

Gowdy responded to Podliska’s claims about the committee, saying on Sunday that the staffer was fired because he mishandled classified information and because he himself was obsessed with targeting Clinton.

Gowdy also said that Podliska never complained about the committee’s focus on Clinton until this week, when he granted interviews to CNN and The New York Times.

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