Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee wants to know why Hillary Clinton was talking to her friend and political adviser about Libya while ignoring pleas for help from her own ambassador on the ground.
“It appears that Hillary Clinton was communicating far more with Sidney Blumenthal than with Chris Stevens,” Huckabee told Breitbart News in a wide-ranging interview following Hillary Clinton’s testimony Thursday before the House Benghazi Committee.
“If she had believed what Chris Stevens was telling her about the need for more security at the consulate in Benghazi, the same way she believed what Sidney Blumenthal was telling her about the politics of the Obama administration, then those four Americans might not be dead today.”
Huckabee was one of the few Republicans that House Democrats mocked by name during the hearing. Clinton even nodded along in agreement when Democrats went after Huckabee’s past Benghazi comments. But Huckabee, a veteran of “brutal” Clinton-era Arkansas politics, refuses to back down on the issue.
“She had plenty of time to communicate with Blumenthal and she had apparently very, very little time to communicate with Chris Stevens,” Huckabee said.
Clinton ran into her first major snag at the hearing when she had to admit, under questioning from Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, that Ambassador Stevens did not have her personal email address. Stevens asked for more security at the Benghazi consulate more than twenty times. Clinton said that only some of his requests were approved before Stevens died tragically on September 11, 2012 in a terrorist attack alongside three other Americans.
“I think we have to conclude that it was politics first and policy second,” Huckabee said, turning his attention to Clinton’s “YouTube video” explanation for the attack, which has now been thoroughly debunked and discredited.
“She sent an email to her own daughter the night of the incident showing that she didn’t believe the talking point about the YouTube video. She told the Egyptians she didn’t believe it. She told the Libyans she didn’t believe it. So she privately tells her family and other heads of state that this was a planned terrorist attack, and she tells the American people that it was about a video? And she trots other American officials out to say this was about the YouTube video?”
For Huckabee, the issue is personal — and it’s frustrating.
“I personally got to know Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods,” Huckabee said, referring to the fallen Navy SEAL killed in the terrorist attack. “Charles gave me a photo of his son Tyrone and that photo is in my office. I see it every time I’m there. Hillary, Obama, Biden, they all looked him in the eye and told him, ‘This is about the video.’ But it wasn’t.”
“That’s why I’m willing to endure the comments from Elijah Cummings in his opening statement, and the ridicule of the left-wing media. Because I feel that those families deserve the truth.” Huckabee went on:
And as much as I would like to think that the American people really care… In all candor, Patrick, this only matters if someone like me is able to stand on the stage and hold her accountable for this outright lie. A congressional hearing? People view that as just partisan back-and-forth. I don’t typically like a special prosecutor, but maybe it’s best to have an independent special prosecutor look at the whole email issue. Did she play fast and loose with classified material? Did she illegally delete documents?”
As Breitbart News reported, Huckabee became the first Republican contender to call for a special prosecutor for the email scandal.
Huckabee, who began his statewide political career the year Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was elected president, said that Hillary Clinton’s scandals are just part of a continuing pattern that has marked the Clintons’ conduct for more than thirty years.
“I’m not surprised at all,” Huckabee said. “There’s always been a willingness to do what’s in their best political interest, and not be straightforward. It goes all the way back to 1980 when Hillary took $1,000 and she turned it into $100,000 in cattle futures. As though Hillary knew anything about cattle. That’s a very complicated investment process. She does it one time and rolls it ten-fold?”
“I’m the one person who has spent my entire political life fighting against the Arkansas political machinery, and it was a brutal environment in which to work. There was one set of rules for those in power and another set of rules for those outside of power.”
As Clinton struggles on the Democratic side, Huckabee’s own candidacy on the Republican side is gaining momentum. The 2008 Iowa caucus champion points out that he picked up the endorsements of two major Iowa activists on the ground, and that he’s spent more time in Iowa and South Carolina than any other Republican candidate so far. When he talks about his goal at this point, he sounds more focused than ever before.
He says, “The way to change things is to win.”
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