Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Charles Krauthammer said that a White House email revealed through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit is "the smoking document" that proves the administration intentionally covered up the truth about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi.
Krauthammer appeared on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier" Tuesday to discuss in specific a Sept. 14, 2012, email from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes to then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and White House press secretary Jay Carney.
The email sought to prep Rice for her appearance on Sunday news shows where she would explain to the public for the first time the details of what happened when over a hundred gunmen attacked the American diplomatic mission, killing four of its members.
The email advises Rice to explain the attack as a response to an anti-Muslim YouTube video created by an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian living in Los Angeles.
In the email, Rhodes tells Rice "To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy." He says her job is, "To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges," two months ahead of the Presidential election.
Krauthammer explained to the show's panel that, "We now have the smoking document, which is the White House saying, 'We’re pushing the video because we don’t want to blame it on the failure of our policies,' which is what anybody who looked at this assumed all the way through."
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He continued, saying, "Before an election, Obama is saying GM is alive, Al-Qaida is dead. He’s running essentially the foreign policy issue, on which the whole campaign is based, is one that says he killed bin Laden, Al-Qaida is on the run."
The email from Rhodes was revealed Tuesday after Judicial Watch won its 2013 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. State Department.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Obama administration responded:
"Unlike those who insist on politicizing the events in Benghazi, our focus remains on ensuring that a tragedy like this isn’t repeated in Libya or anywhere else in the world. In our view, these documents only serve to reinforce what we have long been saying: that in the days after September 11, 2012, we were concerned by unrest occurring across the region and that we provided our best assessment of what was happening at the time."
Concluding, Krauthammer said the document isn't likely to make waves in the media. "I know what’s going to happen. The mainstream media will say 'Oh, it’s so complicated,' and they are not going to look into this."
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