Imagine you are the parent of an adult child who was brutally murdered in a consulate in a faraway nation.

Imagine how you would feel when you learned that the government official in charge of the consulate told you a bald-faced lie about what led to your child’s murder.

Now imagine your grief when over three years after your child’s death, the agency supposedly protecting your interests refuses to give you any more details because it claims you are not “immediate family.”

That’s what has happened to Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, one of the four men killed in the September, 2012, raid on the American consulate in Benghazi.

On the eve of the Hillary Clinton’s testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Pat Smith appeared on CNN Newsroom with host Carol Costello to voice her anger at Hillary Clinton’s lies and the shabby way she has been treated by the State Department.

Even though Smith was told by Clinton that she would “get back” with her about her son’s death, Smith said, “She has not called me. She has not contacted me. She has not given me any information, except to tell me that I am not a member of the immediate family and I do not need to know.”

Costello was shocked. “They told you that?” she asked.

Last summer, in a June town hall event, Hillary Clinton pulled the Mom Card when asked by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about how she would respond to Pat Smith’s dogged determination to discover the truth about what happened to her son in Benghazi. “I totally relate to her as a mother or to any of the family members of the four Americans who were killed that night. I can see why she and others are inconsolable,” she said.

Yes, Hillary is very empathetic with the grieving Pat Smith. Right. And bears don’t. . . well, you know.

After the conclusion of Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the Benghazi Committee, Pat Smith appeared on The Kelly File with Megyn Kelly, pouring out the rage and frustration which has been building in her these past three years.

https://youtu.be/jxBi78Wu6gI

Why shouldn’t she be infuriated? In testimony it was revealed that Hillary Clinton had immediately emailed her daughter Chelsea, under the pseudonym ‘Diane Reynolds,’ that Sean Smith had been killed by “an Al-Queda-like group,” not protestors angry about a video, as she told Pat Smith.

An email referenced by @Jim_Jordan from the night of the #Benghazi attack: https://t.co/zVFHCWzeeS #BenghaziAnswers pic.twitter.com/RS1X8iMssq

— Benghazi Committee (@HouseBenghazi) October 22, 2015

And now Pat Smith can’t even find out if that bloody handprint left on the walls of the Benghazi consulate was made by her own son. The State Department has said she is not “immediate family.”

But it doesn’t matter, you see. Apologizing to Pat Smith for lies and providing her with the information she desperately craves about the death of her only child would destroy the narrative of the honorable Hillary. Moreover, Hillary’s presidential campaign must be protected at all costs. And that is more important than a mother’s grief.