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Clinton Ally Aided Campaign of FBI Official’s Wife - WSJ
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-ally-aids-campaign-of-fbi-officials-wife-1477266114?mod=e2tw

Clinton Ally Aided Campaign of FBI Official’s WifeGroup linked to Virginia
Gov. Terry McAuliffe donated nearly half a million dollars to 2015 state
Senate candidate
By
Devlin Barrett
• Oct. 23, 2016 7:41 p.m. ET
[image: Campaign finance records show Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s
political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate
campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the
deputy director of the FBI.] ENLARGE

Campaign finance records show Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s
political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate
campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the
deputy director of the FBI. Photo: paul j. richards/Agence
France-Presse/Getty Images

The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential
Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton
<http://topics.wsj.com/person/C/Hillary-Clinton/6344>, gave nearly $500,000
to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau
of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs.
Clinton’s email use.

Campaign finance records show Mr. McAuliffe’s political-action committee
donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who
is married to Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI.

The Virginia Democratic Party, over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable
control, donated an additional $207,788 worth of support to Dr. McCabe’s
campaign in the form of mailers, according to the records. That adds up to
slightly more than $675,000 to her candidacy from entities either directly
under Mr. McAuliffe’s control or strongly influenced by him. The figure
represents more than a third of all the campaign funds Dr. McCabe raised in
the effort.

Mr. McAuliffe and other state party leaders recruited Dr. McCabe to run,
according to party officials. She lost the election to incumbent Republican
Dick Black.

A spokesman for the governor said he “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.”

Among political candidates that year, Dr. McCabe was the third-largest
recipient of funds from Common Good VA, the governor’s PAC, according to
campaign finance records. Dan Gecker received $781,500 from the PAC and
$214,456 from the state party for a campaign that raised $2.9 million,
according to records; and Jeremy McPike received $803,500 from the PAC and
$535,162 from the state party, raising more $3.8 million that year for his
candidacy.

The governor could recall only one meeting with Mr. McCabe—when he and
other state Democrats met with the couple on March 7, 2015, to urge Dr.
McCabe to run, according to the spokesman.

The FBI said in a statement that during his wife’s campaign Mr. McCabe
“played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising
or support of any kind. Months after the completion of her campaign,
then-Associate Deputy Director McCabe was promoted to Deputy, where, in
that position, he assumed for the first time, an oversight role in the
investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails.”

FBI officials said that after that meeting with the governor in Richmond on
March 7, Mr. McCabe sought ethics advice from the bureau and followed it,
avoiding involvement with public corruption cases in Virginia, and avoiding
any campaign activity or events.

Mr. McCabe’s supervision of the Clinton email case in 2016 wasn’t seen as a
conflict or an ethics issue because his wife’s campaign was over by then
and Mr. McAuliffe wasn’t part of the email probe, officials said.

“Once I decided to run,” Dr. McCabe said, “my husband had no formal role in
my campaign other than to be a supportive husband to me and our children.
As a federal official…everyone who participated in our campaign understood
and respected that he could not participate.”

Mr. McCabe is a longtime FBI official who focused much of his career on
terrorism. His wife is a hospital physician who campaigned in northern
Virginia, where the couple live with their children.

The 2015 Virginia State senate race was Dr. McCabe’s first run for office
and her campaign spent $1.8 million. The race was part of Mr. McAuliffe’s
failed effort to win a Democratic majority in the Virginia legislature,
which would have given him significantly more sway in Richmond, the state
capital.

Mr. McAuliffe has been a central figure in the Clintons’ political careers
for decades. In the 1990s, he was Bill Clinton’s chief fundraiser and he
remains one of the couple’s closest allies and public boosters. Mrs.
Clinton appeared with him in northern Virginia in 2015 as he sought to
increase the number of Democrats in the state legislature.

Dr. McCabe announced her candidacy in March 2015, the same month it was
revealed that Mrs. Clinton had used a private server as secretary of state
to send and receive government emails, a disclosure that prompted the FBI
investigation.

At the time the investigation was launched in July 2015, Mr. McCabe was
running the FBI’s Washington, D.C., field office, which provided personnel
and resources to the Clinton email probe.

That investigation examined whether Mrs. Clinton’s use of private email may
have compromised national security by transmitting classified information
in an insecure system. A review of Mrs. Clinton’s emails concluded that 110
messages contained classified information. Mrs. Clinton has said she made a
mistake but that she never sent or received messages that were marked
classified.

At the end of July 2015, Mr. McCabe was promoted to FBI headquarters and
assumed the No. 3 position at the agency. In February 2016, he became FBI
Director James Comey’s second-in-command.

As deputy director, Mr. McCabe was part of the executive leadership team
overseeing the Clinton email investigation, though FBI officials say any
final decisions on that probe were made by Mr. Comey, who served as a
high-ranking Justice Department official in the administration of George W.
Bush.

Mr. McAuliffe has been under investigation for months by the FBI’s
Washington field office, a probe that includes an examination of donations
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-investigating-donations-to-virginia-gov-terry-mcauliffe-1464046899>
made on behalf of a Chinese businessman, according to people familiar with
the matter. His lawyers have denied any wrongdoing and said the
investigation is seeking to determine if Mr. McAuliffe may have violated a
law requiring people to register as agents of a foreign entity.

It was unclear the extent to which Mr. McCabe may have recused himself from
discussions involving Mr. McAuliffe. When Mr. McCabe’s wife began her
campaign, he shied away from involvement in Virginia public corruption
cases, according to officials.

Once the campaign was over, officials said, Mr. McCabe and FBI officials
felt the potential conflict-of-interest issues ended.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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