Sean Hannity played a montage Thursday night on his Fox News show of Obama administration officials, including then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton, falsely casting blame for the Benghazi terrorist attack on an anti-Muslim video when her own emails reveal that Clinton knew almost immediately it was an orchestrated assault.
During Clinton's day of testimony Thursday before the Benghazi Select Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) showed Clinton had told the Egyptian prime minister, the president of Libya and her own family in the days following the attack that she knew the attack was pre-planned and had nothing to do with any video.
Interviewing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Hannity played for the audience "the lie they told you."
"We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with," Clinton said on Sept. 14, 2012.
"We have no information to suggest that it was a pre-planned attack," White House press secretary Jay Carney said the same day. "The unrest we've seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims find offensive."
"What sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world," Susan Rice said during a Fox News Sunday appearance Sept. 16, 2012. Rice was slammed later on for repeating that falsehood on every Sunday show that day.
"As offensive as this video was, and obviously, we've denounced it and the United States government had nothing to do with it, that's never an excuse for violence," President Obama said on The Late Show Sept. 18, 2012.
The Weekly Standard reported in 2013 on edited talking points revealing that even before the Benghazi attack had concluded that officials knew an al-Qaeda linked group was involved. Jordan made a familiar charge: it appeared the video was blamed in order to assist Obama's re-election campaign narrative that he had al-Qaeda "on the run."
"You did it because Libya was supposed to be this great success story for the Obama White House and the Clinton State Department, and a key campaign theme that year was GM’s alive, bin Laden’s dead, al-Qaeda’s on the run," Jordan said. "Now you have a terrorist attack, and it’s a terrorist attack in Libya and it’s just 56 days before an election. You can live with the protest about a video. That won’t hurt you, but a terrorist attack will. So you can’t be square with the American people."
Hannity called the exchange between Jordan and Clinton "an amazing rebuke of what they had been telling you, the American people."
"Well, this actually seals the case in the sense that before, you don't know whether she's incompetent or she's lying," Giuliani said. "Now we know they're lying."