Pat Smith, mother of slain State Department officer Sean Smith, who died in the September 11, 2012, attack on an American consulate in Benghazi, tore into the federal government and their efforts to investigate that deadly attack on Tuesday. In an interview with CNN host Jake Tapper, Smith said that she blames former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for failing to ensure her staff was secure and for not taking blame for that failure after they were killed in the line of duty.



“How are you holding up?” Tapper asked Smith.

“Terrible,” she replied as her voice broke with emotion. “I cry every night. I don’t sleep at night. I need answers.”

“Why was there no security for him when they were supposed to have security, and the security that they did have was called back?” Smith asked. “It’s just things do not add up and I’m just told lies.”

Tapper asked if Smith was concerned that the Benghazi investigation had been politicized. “Why don’t they just do their job?” Smith asked after agreeing that the investigation had become a political football.

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“Have you heard from anybody in the Obama administration?” Tapper asked.

“I got one telephone call from a clerk that was a couple days after it happened,” Smith replied. “Since then, all they have told me is that I am not part of the immediate family so they don’t want to tell me anything.”

Tapper played a portion of former Sec. Clinton’s testimony before Congress in which she asked “what difference, at this point, does it make” what the impetus behind the attack on the consulate was.

“Well, that’s what I want to know,” Smith shot back. “Why did it happen? And she is in charge. Why couldn’t she do something about it? I blame her.”

“That’s her department. She’s supposed to be on top of it, and yet she claims that she knows nothing – it wasn’t told to her,” Smith said. “Who’s running the place?”

“I guess what I find so amazing – I don’t [find it] surprising that you haven’t gotten answers because I haven’t either,” Tapper noted. “And I’ve been reporting on this since September, but what I find so surprising is that there hasn’t been any other outreach other than that clerk.”

“They don’t want to talk to me,” Smith replied, “because they are afraid of what I might say. Because I might say something like, ‘who is at fault and why are they covering it up?’ And they are covering it up because I haven’t heard any answers.”

Watch the segment below via CNN:

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