Hillary Clinton said during Wednesday’s debate that the mother of one of the four Americans killed in the Benghazi attacks is “absolutely wrong” when she says that Clinton and other Obama administration officials personally told her that a YouTube video was the catalyst for the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks.
“She’s wrong. She’s absolutely wrong,” Clinton told debate moderator Jorge Ramos when asked about comments made last year by Patricia Smith, the mother of State Department information officer Sean Smith.
During an interview with CNN in October, Smith said that during a memorial service for her son and the other Benghazi victims held on Sept. 14, 2012, Clinton said that the short YouTube movie “Innocence of Muslims” was the catalyst for the attack.
“She’s lying! She’s absolutely lying! She told me something entirely different at the casket ceremony. She said it was because of the video and that she would get back to me and tell me what happened with my son,” Smith told CNN last year.
Clinton offered her sympathies for Patricia Smith and the other victims’ families. But she did not directly address what she did or did not say to them during the memorial service.
“This was fog of war. This was complicated,” Clinton said Wednesday. She also maintained that she does believe that the terrorists who carried out the attack were partially motivated by the video.
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