Updated at 12:32 a.m. on April 4
Jill McCabe, the wife of fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, on Monday opened up about the “nightmare” she said she and her family have endured after being used as an example of alleged biases within the FBI by President Trump.
“I made the decision to run for office because I was trying to help people. Instead, it turned into something that was used to attack our family, my husband’s career and the entire FBI,” Jill McCabe, a pediatrician, wrote in an op-ed published by the Washington Post Monday.
In the piece, Jill McCabe recounted how she was poached to run for a Virginia state Senate seat in 2014 by the chief of staff of then-Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, following “an entourage of politicians” coming through her ER, and a reporter pulling her aside to ask “how Medicaid expansion would affect [her] patients.”
The swing voter said she and her husband, a lifelong Republican, vetted the possibility of running with ethics experts at the FBI.
Andrew McCabe never helped with any of her campaign operations nor assisted with fundraising efforts, Jill McCabe wrote, though he did “he put on a campaign T-shirt” at a swimming meet so they “could take a family picture” with their children.
Jill McCabe insisted funding she received from Virginia’s Democratic Party and then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee was “on par” with other candidates in competitive races, regardless of party, and were publicly disclosed.
“Andrew’s involvement in the Clinton investigation came not only after the contributions were made to my campaign but also after the race was over,” Jill McCabe added, having lost her election in November 2015.
“Clinton’s emails never came up — if they had, I would have found that alarming, immediately reported it and likely pulled out of the campaign,” she continued.
Trump repeatedly used the donations to draw links between Andrew McCabe and the Democratic Party as evidence of bias within the FBI that could have affected the way in which it conducted investigations of him.
Andrew McCabe, a 21-year veteran of the FBI, was fired on March 16, two days before he planned to retire on his 50th birthday so he could collect a full pension.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismissed Andrew McCabe following the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General reporting “allegations of misconduct” by him to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility “after an extensive and fair investigation.”
His legal team, which is led by former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich, is reportedly still working to figure out what his pension and benefits will be following his departure.
