Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's GoFundMe "legal defense fund" will stop accepting donations Monday evening at 7pm EST, after support for the fired bureaucrat took in over half a million dollars - roughly $100,000 more than his wife's campaign took from Hillary Clinton pal Terry McAuliffe as McCabe's office was investigating Clinton and her infamous charities.

"Friends of Andrew McCabe" posted the following to the official GoFundMe campaign Monday morning:

UPDATE: As of 7pm ET on April 2, the Andrew McCabe Legal Fund will cease accepting donations on GoFundMe. The funds generated will in the very near future be transferred to a more formal legal defense trust.

McCabe supporters launched the official GoFundMe campaign after dozens of similar campaigns were launched on the platform with the stated goal of raising funds to make up for the former Deputy Director's full pension - which he was fired a day before he was eligible. McCabe said in a statement:

“The outpouring of support on GoFundMe has been simply overwhelming and has led to contributions that have left us stunned and extraordinarily grateful. The GoFundMe campaign began organically, with generous people spontaneously giving to accounts that others had set up. I never imagined that I would need to rely on this type of assistance. The fact is that if I am going to continue taking a stand against the unfair way I have been treated, I will need the help of a talented and courageous team behind me." -Andrew McCabe

Indeed, McCabe will need a talented and courageous legal team to defend against findings by the DOJ's Inspector General, that he lied four times - including twice under oath, about leaking to the press during the Clinton investigation, as reported by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) during a Fox News appearance.

JORDAN: “McCabe didn’t lie just once, he lied four times. He lied to James Comey. He lied to the Office of Professional Responsibility and he lied twice under oath to the Inspector General. Remember, this is Andrew McCabe, Deputy Director of the FBI. ...Four times he lied about leaking information to the Wall Street Journal.”





Specifically, McCabe authorized an F.B.I. spokesman and attorney to tell Devlin Barrett of the Wall St. Journal, just days before the 2016 election, that the FBI had not put the brakes on a separate investigation into the Clinton Foundation - at a time in which McCabe was coming under fire for his wife taking a $467,500 campaign contribution from Clinton proxy pal, Terry McAuliffe.

The WSJ article in question reads:

New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case. The probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity. ... Some investigators grew frustrated, viewing FBI leadership as uninterested in probing the charity, these people said. Others involved disagreed sharply, defending FBI bosses and saying Mr. McCabe in particular was caught between an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton Foundation case.

So McCabe leaked information to the WSJ in what appears to have been an attempt to combat rumors that Clinton had indirectly bribed him to back off the Clinton Foundation investigation, and then lied about it four times to the DOJ and FBI, including twice under oath.

That whole exoneration thing...

The former FBI Deputy Director may end up needing the entire GoFundMe purse and more...

Recall that McCabe's office heavily altered the language of the FBI's official opinion concerning Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information - effectively "decriminalizing" her conduct. Comey's original draft - using the term "grossly negligent" would have legally required that the FBI recommended charges against Clinton. Instead, McCabe's team changed it to "extremely careless," - a legally meaningless term.

According to documents produced by the FBI, FBI employees exchanged proposed edits to the draft statement. On May 6, Deputy Director McCabe forwarded the draft statement to other senior FBI employees, including Peter Strzok, E.W. Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and an employee on the Office of General Counsel whose name has been redacted. While the precise dates of the edits and identities of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey's statement in at least three respects. -Letter from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)

We wonder how quickly McCabe's legal defense fund - now standing at over half a million dollars - will evaporate under the weight of several ongoing investigations.