So, Trump accused Hillary of bribing the FBI to drop the investigation against her, like he did with Pam Bondi and Greg Abbott regarding Trump University.
"One of the closest people to Hillary Clinton, with longstanding ties to her and husband -- the closest person, I can tell you that … gave more than $675,000 to the campaign of the wife of a top FBI official who oversaw the investigation into Mrs. Clinton's illegal email server," Trump said at the Sanford rally. "In other words, the man who was in charge of the investigation of Hillary Clinton accepted essentially from Hillary Clinton $675,000 that went to his wife." - Trump, at a speech, October 25, 2016.
There are a number of problems with this charge, but the main one is that the timeline doesn't add up.
In 2015, Dr. Jill McCabe, a pediatrician, was recruited to run for one of the
40 seatsin the Virginia's Republican-controlled Senate by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who co-chaired Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign and chaired Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful 2008 run for president.
According to
the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, McAuliffe and other Virginia Democrats met with McCabe and her husband, Andrew, on March 7, 2015, to urge her to run as part of an effort to take back the Senate.
At the time, Andrew McCabe was
assistant director of the FBI's field office in Washington and had focused much of his career on terrorism.
The FBI released a statement that Andrew 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."
Based on that advice, the FBI said, when Dr. McCabe chose to run, Andrew "McCabe and FBI lawyers implemented a system of recusal from all FBI investigative matters involving Virginia politics, a process followed for the remainder of her campaign. During the campaign, he played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind."
News that Clinton was using a private email account in violation of federal record-keeping requirements, broke
March 2, 2015.
McCabe
announced her candidacy 10 days later on March 12, 2015.
That July, the FBI was called in to begin a criminal investigation into the use of Clinton's private server at her home in New York. And that same month, Andrew McCabe
was promoted to associate deputy director, the third in command at the FBI. He moved to FBI headquarters
in September.
Not surprisingly, both McAuliffe, through his political action committee, and the state Democratic Party, donated to Dr. McCabe's campaign.
On Oct. 1, 27 and 29, McAuliffe's PAC, Common Good VA, gave Dr. McCabe's campaign a total of
$450,000. (An additional $17,500 had been given earlier). The Democratic Party of Virginia spent
$207,788 on Sept. 30 and Oct. 22 for mailings on her behalf. That would amount to 40 percent of the
$1.7 million spent by the campaign.
Two other Democrats running for Senate seats, Jeremy Pike and Dan Gecker,
got larger amounts from McAuliffe's PAC.
In November, Dr. McCabe lost her race to incumbent Republican Dick Black.
On
Feb. 1, 2016, three months after his wife's defeat, Andrew McCabe became the FBI's deputy director.
In a statement to the
Wall Street Journal,
the FBI said it was the first time McCabe had any oversight role over 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.
So, the investigation was already 6 months old when McCabe got involved, and at no point is Hillary or her campaign involved in McCabe's campaign.
I mean, what's the idea, that Hillary told a friend to donate to another candidate on the off chance that her husband would be promoted to oversee a case that hadn't even begun what the candidate began her run?
More than that, while McCabe had some oversight on the case, it was Director Comey who made the decision not to prosecute.
So, to sum up, Hillary's campaign wasn't directly involved (and there's no indication it was indirectly involved, either), and the FBI husband of the candidate that did receive money from a PAC run by a friend of Clinton's didn't make the decision to not prosecute.
