A top Clinton ally’s political organization reportedly gave nearly a half-million dollars to the campaign of the wife of an FBI official who would go on to help oversee the probe into Hillary Clinton’s email practices – a tangled web likely to fuel Republican complaints about the investigation.
(FOX)- The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night on the connection. According to the Journal, finance records show Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s PAC gave $467,500 to Dr. Jill McCabe’s 2015 state Senate campaign. The Virginia Democratic Party spent an additional $207,788 on the campaign, the Journal reported.
McCabe, who ended up losing to Republican incumbent Dick Black, is married to Andrew McCabe – the FBI’s deputy director.
At the time of the campaign and of McAuliffe’s support, McCabe was associate deputy director. He later was promoted to deputy after the campaign ended, assuming an oversight role in the Clinton email investigation.
According to the Journal, McCabe sought ethics guidance from the FBI and followed it, but his supervision of the email case was not seen as a potential conflict since Jill McCabe’s campaign was over and McAuliffe wasn’t directly involved in the email case.
McAuliffe and other state figures reportedly recruited Dr. McCabe to run in the first place, but a spokesman pushed back on any suggestion of impropriety.
McAuliffe “supported Jill McCabe because he believed she would be a good state senator. This is a customary practice for Virginia governors… Any insinuation that his support was tied to anything other than his desire to elect candidates who would help pass his agenda is ridiculous,” the spokesman told the Journal.
The FBI also said Andrew McCabe “played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind.”