GOP Rep Pompeo: ‘Clinton Put Politics Ahead of People’ In Benghazi, Chose Not To Do Sunday Show Appearances And Threw Rice Under the Bus

On Tuesday’s edition of Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade & Friends” Benghazi Select Committee member Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) said, “”[A]t every turn Secretary Clinton put politics ahead of people.” And that Clinton, despite knowing the Benghazi attack was terrorism, “chose not to go on the Sunday shows. Instead, she threw then-Ambassador Rice under the bus. And gave her two political hacks to brief her.”

Pompeo stated, “[A]t every turn Secretary Clinton put politics ahead of people. That night, when we had Americans who were under attack in Benghazi, Libya, not a single aircraft moved in that direction, during the attack. Not a single wheel began to turn towards Benghazi, Libya, while mortars were falling. The situation in Washington DC was so radically different than the absolute terror that the 30+ Americans were experiencing in the annex. There was never — there’s always been this question about could we have gotten an aircraft there quickly enough to have saved them? We now know the facts, they never tried.”

He added, “[W]e can be sure that if it was your son or daughter or family member, you would look at that and find that the failure in leadership was morally reprehensible.”

Pompeo also said that it was “completely false” that Susan Rice’s statements that the attack was caused by a video were based on the best information, and Clinton knew the attack was a terror attack and “chose not to go on the Sunday shows. Instead, she threw then-Ambassador Rice under the bus. And gave her two political hacks to brief her.”

Pompeo continued that “Every single eyewitness on the ground, Brian, who reported that night, talked about a terror attack. There was no mention of a YouTube video, from the people who knew best, the folks in Tripoli and Benghazi who were on the ground experiencing that terror, knew what this was. They communicated that back to the United States government at the most senior levels, and in spite of that, in an effort to protect their foreign policy legacy, they put politics ahead of the people.”

Pompeo did say that Clinton didn’t deny any additional protection to Americans in Benghazi, but that simply not denying requests wasn’t good enough.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett