A new report in The Wall Street Journal says that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of both Hillary and Bill Clinton, gave almost $500,000 in campaign donations to the wife of a high-ranking FBI official, who, in turn, later helped preside over the investigation of Hillary Clinton for her private email server.
The official, Andrew McCabe, is currently the FBI’s deputy director. At the time of McAuliffe’s donations, he was the associate deputy director of the Bureau.
His wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, ran for the state senate in Virginia. McAuliffe pulled strings with his state’s Democratic Party office, getting it to offer more than $200,000 worth of support for McCabe’s campaign. In addition to McAuliffe’s donations through his political action committee, Common Good VA, these amounts represented one-third of McCabe’s overall campaign budget. She ultimately lost her senate race to incumbent Republican Dick Black.
The FBI released a statement that tried to downplay the controversy, reading in part, “Months after the completion of [his wife’s] 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.”
However, the FBI conveniently leaves out the fact that Clinton’s private email server was revealed the same month that McCabe launched her campaign, and the FBI’s formal investigation of Clinton’s emails began in July 2015. This was prior to when McAuliffe made his donations.
Also, it should be noted that the email investigation was run through the FBI’s Washington, D.C. field office, which was where Andrew McCabe worked during this time. Only later was McCabe promoted to the FBI headquarters to work directly under FBI Director James Comey.
All of this occurred while the FBI probe was still ongoing. Of course, one has to ask why McCabe was promoted in the first place — the Journal article does not get into these details.
Combined with recent information about Director Comey’s ties to the Clinton Foundation via his acting as a director of the Swiss Banking arm of financial firm HSBC and the admission of FBI agents working under Comey, who thought he was a “dirty cop,” this is just another piece of a rotten puzzle that seems to spell corruption at the very highest levels of the Bureau.
Of course, it was Comey’s recommendation not to indict Hillary Clinton that “convinced” the Justice Department under President Obama-appointee Loretta Lynch to “let Clinton walk,” effectively giving her prosecutorial immunity for her email affair — for now.
But if it can be proven that Comey, McCabe and/or others obstructed the probe or hindered the investigation of Clinton in any way that could lead to the ousting of them and/or the eventual prosecution of Clinton, if Congress is willing to be thorough enough.
Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah has already issued a subpoena for FBI records involved in the case; it remains to be seen if further actions and/or testimony from other sources and agents will be given to Congressional committees.
Even if Hillary Clinton becomes president, this is not an issue that will magically go away; in fact, as long as there’s a Republican majority in Congress, Clinton will remain under attack on this issue. If, as president, Clinton were to issue pardons for anyone involved the case, it would almost certainly lead to a national uproar.
Clinton’s unfavorability rating is already sky-high; without an opposing political candidate to defeat in an election, that unfavorability rating will begin to impact her much more than it currently does.
Already, at least one Congressman, Mo Brooks of Alabama, had raised the specter of impeachment proceedings being initiated against Clinton even prior to the election being held. This has been bolstered by conservative policy group Judicial Watch’s president Tom Fitton, author of the recent book, “Clean House: Exposing Our Government’s Secrets and Lies.”
As Fitton says, “One of the dirty little secrets in Washington is that Mrs. Clinton can be impeached now. A federal official leaving office does not end congressional jurisdiction over impeachment for misconduct in that office. And if she was convicted by the Senate, the sanction could be ineligibility for future office… No matter who is elected, there is going to be intense pressure to get a criminal investigation going. Just because Mrs. Clinton may win doesn’t mean there won’t be a criminal investigation. In fact, it may be more likely.”
It was Judicial Watch’s FOIA request involving records related to the Benghazi scandal which caused Clinton’s email server to come to light in the first place (and gave Clinton enough time to delete thousands of her emails).
Fitton points out that the State Department has yet to release some 10,000 pages of messages from Clinton and her assistant Huma Abedin, and these date from the time when more of the “pay-for-play” actions involving the Clinton Foundation and paid speeches of Bill Clinton took place.
Needless to say, even if Hillary Clinton becomes president, there are interesting times ahead.
~Conservative Zone
