Andrew McCabe may have been a dedicated public servant for most of his career at the FBI, but he never should have been in a leadership role after a “farce” of a Hillary Clinton email investigation, a former Whitewater investigator said Tuesday.

McCabe on Monday announced he would move up his planned retirement as deputy director from March after FBI Director Christopher Wray over the weekend examined a classified memo prepared at the direction of the majority staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

“I think that he should have been reassigned-slash-demoted as soon as Chris Wray got into the FBI, because I think that he should have recused himself and never been involved in either the email investigation or the Clinton Foundation investigation,” Sol Wisenberg said on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

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Wisenberg served on the team that investigated then-President Bill Clinton. He added that firing McCabe likely would not have been legal. But he said it was extremely troubling McCabe had such close ties to Clinton confidants at the same time he was in a supervisory role over a probe into Hillary’s mishandling of classified information as secretary of state.

Clinton used a private server and email address to conduct official U.S. diplomatic business. Hundreds of documents containing highly sensitive information were found among Clinton’s emails on her private server.

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McCabe’s wife received $500,000 in donations during her state senate campaign from a political action committee aligned with longtime Clinton family friend and then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe. She got another $200,000 in contributions that she would not have received without McAuliffe’s help, Wisenberg said.

“If your wife takes $700,000 in campaign contributions that you’re never going to have to repay from somebody who is a longtime key — and I do mean key — Clinton crony … you should recuse yourself,” he said. “You should not be involved.”

Wisenberg said there is no question the investigation of Clinton violated federal investigative standards.

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“Anybody who has been involved in federal law enforcement and how one conducts a federal criminal investigation will tell you that the Clinton email ‘invest’ was a farce, OK, was a farce from beginning to end,” he said.

“There was no need to give immunity to the people they gave immunity to.”

“And this was at the [Department of Justice] level; really, the FBI acquiesced. But I would lay it right at the doorstep of the attorney general. You don’t make secret deals, side deals, with people. There was no need to give immunity to the people they gave immunity to.”

Those immunity agreements ended up placing restrictions on the separate FBI investigation of the family-run Clinton Foundation, Wisenberg said.

Wisenberg said then-President Barack Obama twice made public comments expressing his belief that Clinton did nothing wrong and would be exonerated.

“Those were signals, totally inappropriate comments,” he said. “But he was so cool and calm — sophisticated when he said them.”

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On the current probe — the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — Wisenberg repeated his belief that there is no good reason for a lawyer to recommend that President Donald Trump submit to an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. As the nation’s chief executive, Trump would face potentially devastating political consequences if he were to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to talk to Mueller.

But talking to Mueller and his lawyers carries enormous risk of getting tripped up on a factual dispute that could lead to perjury allegations, Wisenberg said.

“The reason you wouldn’t go in there is, you got one of the most aggressive and accomplished prosecution [teams] that has probably ever been assembled,” he said. “They know everything about their investigation. They know a lot of things that you don’t necessarily know.”

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.