Zine El Abidine Ben Ali the office of his lawyer, Mounir Ben Salha, acknowledging his regime made "errors, abuses and violations". His statement came as a reaction to the public hearing sessions made by the Truth and Dignity Commission in Tunisia. Ben Ali and his family are accused of corruption, which was a major contribution to the 2010–2011 Tunisian protests which led to the fall of his government. Many of Ben Ali's family members subsequently also fled the country. On 20 January 2011, Tunisian television reported that 33 members of Ben Ali's family had been arrested in the past week, as they tried to flee
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State but she avoided specific issues of U.S. aid and when elections should take place. President Obama was reportedly unhappy with U.S. intelligence agencies following their failure to foresee the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprising and the downfall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as well as the Egyptian protests. Responding to criticism that the State Department had failed to see the developments in Egypt coming, Clinton defended the U.S. in an interview on Al-Arabiya, saying "I don't think anybody could have predicted we'd be sitting here talking about the end of the Mubarak presidency at the time that this all started." Reflecting