The FBI's second in command is facing pressure over donations Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a top Clinton ally, made to the official's wife who was running an uphill battle against a popular conservative Northern Virginia state senator.

That senator, Dick Black, on Monday called for the resignation of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Black said that McCabe, who later oversaw the probe into the Hillary Rodham Clinton email scandal, should have known McAuliffe was one of Clinton's closest advisers and friends and recused himself from the probe of the Democratic presidential candidate.

"I call on Andrew McCabe to step down from the FBI for the good of all the agents who do the their work in in ethical and honest fashion," Black told Secrets. "What he has done has hurt the FBI."

The Wall Street Journal reported the campaign payments steered by McAuliffe to McCabe's wife, Jill, in the 2015 race. She lost to Black by 5 points.

A McAuliffe spokesman told the Journal that the governor thought McCabe had a good chance to win, despite having little political background and running in the Loudoun County district that Black had previously won by 14 points. "Any insinuation that his support was tied to anything other than his desire to elect candidates who would help pass his agenda is ridiculous," said the spokesman.

The FBI, meanwhile, told the Journal that McCabe "played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind. Months after the completion of her 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."

Black did not make a direct link between the $675,000 sent to Jill McCabe's senate campaign and Andrew McCabe's subsequent supervision of the email probe that cleared Clinton.

But he did say that ethically McCabe should have stayed clear of the email probe because the donations from the Clinton confidant made his family "indebted" to McAuliffe, once even touted as a Clinton vice presidential possibility.

"I can't tell you that there was a direct quid pro quo. What I can tell you is that his family was indebted to the governor to the tune of some $800,000 and then to turn around and to do something that clearly would cause Terry McAuliffe to blow his stack, that put him in a position that no federal judge, no prosecutor, no FBI agent would ever want to be placed in and where ethically there is absolutely no excuse for allow that clear appearance of impropriety," said Black.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com