Jill McCabe, the wife of fired FBI official Andrew McCabe, claimed in a Monday Washington Post column that the $467,500 she received from Terry McAuliffe's PAC was "on par with what other candidates in competitive races" received. But Virginia campaign finance records show she was one of the biggest recipients of campaign cash from the longtime Clinton family ally.
McCabe's column attempts to "set the record straight" on claims that her husband's handling of the bureau's investigation into Hillary Clinton may have been impacted by the money she received from McAuliffe, a close friend of the Clinton family who chaired Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 campaign.
Though she claims the money received from McAuliffe's Common Good VA PAC were "on par" with what was received by other candidates, records compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project show she brought in more through McAuliffe's PAC than all but 2 of the 37 legislative candidates the PAC ever supported.
McCabe received $452,500 in cash from the PAC for her ultimately unsuccessful 2015 run for state senate. The only two candidates receiving more were Jeremy McPike, who received $792,000, and Dan Gecker, who received $770,000.
The next closest candidate behind McCabe, John Edwards, received $251,000, nearly $200,000 less than McCabe took from McAuliffe's PAC. Aside from Gary McCollum, who received $237,000, no other candidate received more than $51,000 from the PAC. The median amount received by legislative candidates from the PAC is just $2,500.
McCabe writes that neither Clinton nor the subject of her emails ever came up in conversations with McAuliffe and that his financial support was not part of an effort by him to influence the FBI's investigation. She points out that her November election loss came a few months before her husband was promoted and put in charge of the Clinton investigation.
The contention made by most is not that McAuliffe gave money to Jill McCabe for the purpose of impeding the investigation into Clinton's email use, but rather that Andrew McCabe should have recused himself from the investigation because of the substantial amount of money McAuliffe gave.
"Andrew McCabe could have and probably should have recused himself from the investigation of Hillary Clinton from the beginning," wrote National Review's Jim Geraghty last month. "He could have avoided a lot of controversy by saying, 'You know, one of Hillary’s longtime allies and friends supplied a lot of money to my wife’s campaign, and that’s going to create questions about any decision I make regarding this investigation. We’re all better off if someone else, without my family connection to a Clinton ally, handles it.'"
Jill McCabe discloses in her Monday article that her husband joined her on a 2014 trip to Richmond to meet with McAuliffe to discuss the possibility of her running for office.