Obama and Clinton indignantly condemned the video in public-address announcements for Pakistani television, paid for by American tax dollars. Obama took to the podium at the United Nations to proclaim to the world that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

The administration then put the criminal-justice system in service of the fraud. Making good on Clinton’s deceitful vow, police raided the home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the video’s producer — arresting him in the dead of night, as if he were a violent criminal, even though he had been cooperating with law enforcement.

Why was he cooperating with law enforcement? Far from a crime, the making of the video was constitutionally protected activity — the kind of activity the executive branch is duty-bound to protect. But Nakoula went to law enforcement because Obama and Clinton’s smear had put his life in danger.

They did that, willfully, because they needed a scapegoat: Nakoula could serve the dual purposes of deceiving Americans into linking Benghazi’s dead to the video while convincing Muslims of Obama and Clinton’s longstanding commitment to subordinate constitutional free-speech rights to sharia’s blasphemy standards. Nakoula, a small-time con man whose prior conviction made him susceptible to revocation of parole, was the perfect foil.