By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Donald Trump’s suggestion that a high-ranking FBI official helped Hillary Clinton during the email investigation because of campaign donations to the official’s wife is off base and untrue, Politifact reports.
Like many of Trump’s claims, this one distorts the truth by misleading people about the timeframe for the donations to Dr. Jill McCabe, who was recruited to run for one of the 40 seats in the Virginia Senate. At the time of the March 2015 donation, the pediatrician’s husband, Andrew McCabe, was focusing on terrorism while working as an assistant director of the FBI’s find office in Washington.
McCabe “consulted with top FBI headquarters and field office ethics officers for guidance, including briefings on the Hatch Act, to prevent against any actual or potential conflict-of-interest, in the event she decided to go forward,” the FBI said in a statement.
Not until three months after McCabe lost the race, Andrew McCabe became the FBI’s deputy director on Feb. 1, 2016. That was the first time he had any oversight of the clinton case.
“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,” according to the FBI statement.
Trump also falsely claimed that Andrew McCabe was responsible for deciding whether to recommend prosecution. That decision was actually FBI Director James Comey’s.
