Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally, donated nearly $500,000 to the campaign of the wife of a top FBI official who would go on to help oversee Hillary Clinton’s email investigation.
McAuliffe’s PAC gave $467,500 to Dr. Jill McCabe’s 2015 state Senate campaign. The Virginia Democratic Party spent another $207,788 on the campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“We’ve never had a thing like this in the history of our country,” Republican nominee Donald Trump said of the revelation at a Florida rally Monday.
At the time of the campaign, McCabe’s husband, Andrew McCabe was the FBI’s Associate Deputy Director. He’s since been promoted to Deputy Director and had an oversight role in Clinton’s email probe.
The Virginia Democratic Party pushed back at any suggestion of impropriety, saying that the governor “supported Jill McCabe because he believed she would be a good state senator. This is a customary practice of 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.”
Jill McCabe, who ended up losing the 2015 state Senate campaign, also tried to assure the public that there is no corruption.
“Once I decided to run, my husband had no formal role in my campaign other than to be a supportive husband to me and my children,” she said. “As a federal official…everyone who participated in our campaign understood and respected that he could not participate.”
GOP chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that the funding looked like a “down payment” to influence the FBI probe.
“Given all we know about how the corrupt Clinton machine operates, it’s not hard to see this as anything other than a down payment to influence the FBI’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server,” he said.
Ironically, the Virginia governor is currently under investigation by the FBI over contributions to his gubernatorial campaign from a Chinese-born businessman.
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