Outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a tea party senator an earful during Wednesday’s hearing on the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya that left a U.S. ambassador dead.

In the heated exchange with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), during which he claimed that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice “intentionally misled” the American public on what happened in Benghazi, Clinton grew noticeably more frustrated with every passing moment.

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As Johnson kept pressing on why the initial statements describing the incident were not completely accurate, Clinton kept insisting that her principle concern was the safety of the embassy staff.

“We were mislead that there was a protest, that something sprang out of that,” he said. “And that was easily… That was not the fact. The American people could have known that within days and they didn’t know that.”

“With all due respect, the fact is we have four dead Americans,” Clinton replied. “Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from happening again, Senator.”

“This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” she added, saying that her focus is on finding the culprits and bringing them to justice. “Then maybe we’ll figure out what was going on in the mean time.”

This video is from C-SPAN, aired Wednesday, January 23, 2013, snipped by Talking Points Memo.